374 : Jay Bayne – You must have the proper mindset to take advantage of where you are

jay

Wise words from Jay for sure. Why does success come so easy for some and seems so hard for others? Perspective and self awareness. See you had a past, that past has lessons you have learned. Mountains you have climbed. Issues you got past. Those things can help you on your path to success. Your path has to be your path. Great discussion where Jay is thankful he chose the path he is on and how you can figure your path. Remember success leaves clues.

Mentioned:

Jay’s previous interviews

#20

#146

Chris Green

Scanner Society

Sponsors

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

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

Jay:                                        [00:00]                     Yeah, and so it’s like, that was for me when, when I got those sales I realized, hey, I can do something with it. I’m speaking like I’m matt now, but the same thing for me when we hit the eclipse and I sold, you know, hundreds of eclipse shirts. I’m like, wow, this is great. If I can get on top of some other trends and, and, and ride that wave while I’m also selling these other things and you’re actually making money because the first few months when I was paying for designers, I’m losing money. I’m using all my royalties for my other businesses.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:28]                     Welcome to the woocommerce. Both focus on the people, the products and the process of income are selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:43]                     Want to jump in and talk about two sponsors today? Sellerlabs scope. Uh, you’ve heard me say it, you know, and you know, you’re probably sitting there saying, Steve, you say this every episode. I do because I believe in the product. Um, yes, a sellerlabs labs is a sponsor. Michelle, don’t get that wrong. However, it’s a sponsor of a product that I use. So I’m kind of lucky they pay me and yet I pay to use the product and the reason I pay to use the product is because it allows me to, um, get better listings, right? That’s what you need to do, right? If you’re selling on Amazon, you need to understand keywords and you need to figure out what are the right keywords and sometimes it’s confusing as heck. Why does a certain keyword work a certain way? Well, the beauty of is in scope as you can pull up your competitor who’s really crushing it and see what keywords they’re using, that’s the lesson.

Stephen:                             [01:30]                     And then you can find a similar one and pull them up and you’re going to see a pattern and then you do that pattern for yourself and you can get those same results if you get lucky and figure out what the key word is for your product. So take some of the luck out of it and use scope again. Go to [inaudible] dot com, forward slash scope. Use the code momentum. Save 50 bucks and try it and see if you can improve an existing listing. I think that’s the best thing you can do is take one of your listings that’s performing and then go in and try to enhance it and see if you see an improvement, give it 30 days or what have you, and if you see an improvement, then there’s a clue that maybe you can see an improvement on all your listings.

Stephen:                             [02:09]                     That’s why I use a scope and I just think it’s such a great product because I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Right? There are much smarter people than I that have done a lot of other cool things to figure out what the keyword is and what people are searching for. Use in a whole bunch of other techniques and then you get to take advantage of it and it’s really inexpensive and again, you’re going to save 50 bucks. So sellerlabs.com, forward slash scope. Use the Kobo mentum, save 50 bucks. Second one is Karen Locker and I talk about her a lot. Um, right now they’re reconciling a shipment and they’re sending the note. Steve, you have to send it receipts because that’s one of the big hassles. Now I’ve got to send receipts to prove that I bought this stuff so I can get my reimbursement and her team is all over me.

Stephen:                             [02:49]                     Like, see, this is your third request. That’s designed a service. Sometimes I need. I’ve been traveling these last few weeks extensively. I kinda need somebody else. Yes, I could have somebody sitting in my office doing it, but that would be a full time employee and we don’t want any full time employees. Um, this is my wife, my son and I. and so anyway, um, that’s why I have members of my team in different areas and I don’t want to have to manage them, you know, I know Karen uses some Va’s, but I don’t want to have to manage that team. And so she does that and her team does that. Team leaders and stuff and they’ve been doing it for me, for me, my wife or I don’t know, two or three years. And we’ve been very, very pleased because the money, they save the refunds, they get me the reimbursements, they get me the fixes when I’m on the road and hey, this isn’t correct.

Stephen:                             [03:34]                     And they can fix it or I have a question, that depth of knowledge that I get from Karen because of her experience is so worth the price. So it is um, solutions four ecommerce. So the word solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. Okay? So use that code solutions four ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50 and $50 a month is a lot of money. And what’s really cool is she’s going to do that inventory health report that I talk about. If you’ve not done one, you should, you know, I mean you’re getting a clue every week when they tell you your inventory health report. But if you want to dig deeper, and again, if you don’t want to do the work, that’s the beauty. She’s going to send you a spreadsheet and then you can parse it and slice and dice and then send it back saying, hey, kill this stuff, refund this, donate this Blahblahblahblahblah.

Stephen:                             [04:25]                     That’s what I do. And I don’t have to go through and do the work. And you know, it’s just important to have a person on your team you can trust. And again, I’ve been paying for the service for two and a half, three years. I have to ask her how long it’s been and I’m very, very pleased. Would think of no one else to be on her team, but Karen and her team, because of what they’ve done, I look for consistency over time. You’ve heard me say that and I’ve gotten it from Karen. So solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum saved the 50 bucks. Get your inventory health report, get 2019 in order and start this new year off, right? It’s gonna. Be a great. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 374. J Bain. Um, this is jace. Third visit to the show.

Stephen:                             [05:09]                     And the reason I wanted to have a back is Jay gave himself permission and there’s a couple of things he says in this episode that really I hope are going to help someone who’s sitting there trying to make a decision because I see a whole bunch of people like, man, can I really do this job and leave my job? It’s like they’re running away from something and if you’re in a place that you got to get away from, of course. But Jay has perspective and didn’t leave his job. That’s the, I’ll give you the. I’ll give away a little bit of the punchline and wait to hear what it allowed him to do and what happened and what it pushed him passed. And there was a change. He had a different perspective and hence the reason he stated his job. And so I think if you have a different point of view, sometimes you might help you make a better decision.

Stephen:                             [05:56]                     And I just want to help you, um, with no costs, no expectation, and to see if that might help somebody make a better decision. Let’s get into the podcast. Alright, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. I’m very excited about today’s guest. He’s a three Peter. Um, I had to bring it back but we were reminiscing and it was two plus years ago. The last time I had him on and prior to that it was almost four years, three, I’m going to be four years and I’m so fascinated by what he’s done because I get to follow them, but the decisions he’s made and where that’s taken him and I think there’s value in those decisions, making those decisions, looking at the long play, looking at where at least the next five or 10 years you are going to be or want to be. And so sometimes you have to pull back a little bit to, to get it to where you want to be. I think that maybe I’m saying a whole bunch of words, but I just think there’s a lot of value that Jay bean will come back. Jay.

Jay:                                        [06:57]                     Excellent. Thanks for having me again on. Again,

Stephen:                             [07:00]                     I circular disgust that. But you get what I’m saying, right? Is that sometimes you gotta look, Hey, where do I want to be longterm, but where am I going to be the next five years? Because you’ve got young kids, right? Or younger. Exactly. And to say tenant 14 girls. Yeah, 14 year old girls. They’re only going to want you in your life, in their life in a meaningful way for a shorter period of time. Now especially then they’re gonna do their thing, but then they’re going to want you again and so you use the right move is to consider that stuff, right. Not gave, you know, 100 hour work weeks and never be part of their lives. Right?

Jay:                                        [07:34]                     Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You have to make the right decision on what’s best for you and what’s best for your family. You know, and, and just get away from that. That Fomo, that fear of missing out where you’re looking at what everybody else is doing. Oh Wow. So and so started a million dollar business and whatnot, but that doesn’t fit within my lifestyle. The kind of hours that are required to put in and the type of resources you put behind it. I mean, you know, the people that are making the big money are the ones that have scaled and have hired a few employees, are dozens of employees and doing like what you’re doing and renting out, you know, big warehouses and all that. And I think that’s great if that’s fits within your lifestyle, but that doesn’t fit within my lifestyle and within my fulltime job hours.

Stephen:                             [08:17]                     But doesn’t it mean you failed? I mean, uh, you know, it’s funny, as I was thinking about this conversation for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been thinking about that, you know, Jay, you failed. You’re not the million dollar seller. You’re not full time in the business right now. But I’m serious. This is serious point is sure you were supposed to leave your job, run away from your job. That’s what most people are doing, running away from that because they believe that’s the evil thing in their life. And then get to this and then this was going to be easy because you see the people selling seven figures and they make it look easy because they’re only telling you the good news and I’m not criticizing anybody because there are outliers that just, that do make it look easy and they aren’t doing it easy. But real people like me, like Steve, I’m talking to who is still a part time seller. So don’t say I’m a, I’m not that guy, I have a big warehouse, but I’m only a part time seller. I only have part time revenue because I only want it. But that’s me. But, but my point is, is that you failed because you didn’t make it as a fulltime seller giving up your job and committing your life to this. That’s what would be written. However, we would both say that’s absolutely not true. And people need to understand that total bullshit. All right, go there. Yeah,

Jay:                                        [09:28]                     yeah. You know, people could say that. And uh, you know, there was a time when I, when I ran scanner monkey facebook group and you know, I, I was never comfortable with the title of Guru. I didn’t want people to look to me and say, you know, let’s do exactly what he’s doing the same way in the same fashion and will make good money and I made good money doing Amazon Fba. Don’t get me wrong. A doing it part time around a full time job. And there was even a couple of times when I thought about it, yeah, what if I did like triple or quadruple my income and I could quit this job. But when I started thinking about it, it’s like I’ve got such a great job. I sell wine and spirits. I have great connections in my local market. And now I cover the state of Texas for the winery that I worked for and you know, that’s, that’s valuable to me.

Jay:                                        [10:19]                     And I have a free company car and I have free gas and I have a free phone. I have all these things that are paid for that. You know, you don’t even. People don’t consider that when they look at their salary, but that’s, you know, costs them money every month. And so I’ve got all these things and I get to go on all these really cool trips to Napa valley, the wine country, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, a fit Mexico on incentive trips. Uh, you know, I have fun at what I do and it’s taken me 23 years to get here. Now you know, some people, they, if they’re in a job that’s a grind to them and it’s like they don’t have flexibility and they work 100 hour weeks at their full time job. My life’s not like that now when I started in the wine industry. Heck yeah.

Jay:                                        [11:00]                     I actually, a big portion of why I was divorced before is that my wife couldn’t deal with the crazy hours I was working during the holidays. You work seven days a week as a sales rep at a grocery store. You don’t get a day off. You’re in there on Saturdays humping cases, Sundays, writing orders for Mondays and you’re just working like round the clock because that’s when you get half of your salary is during like October through December, we call it ond. Whereas, you know, in our current business, we call it q four, but anyway, so it’s like that was, that was a struggle. Like I would have gladly given up that job, but I had a plan. I knew I was going to go onto the supplier side, which is where I am now. And then you have flexible hours. Yeah. Some days you’re, you know, I’m hosting.

Jay:                                        [11:46]                     Like last night I hosted a wine dinner down in a pair of land and it was, I got home around midnight, uh, and I, I mean, I had a blast. I had a five course meal. I drank good wines, I met new friends. I mean not everybody can say that about their jobs, so I don’t consider it a failure to continue to do something that a, I enjoy, be, pays the bills and see, you know, provides all the benefits that I get. I’m happy to continue to do that and quite honestly I was surprised, you know this, let’s see, it was a year and a half ago that they promoted me from the local market of Houston to all of Texas, but I’ve been pushing that off for so long because I didn’t want to do the travel. I didn’t want to do the dates because my kids were so young. I felt like I needed to be here, but now that my daughter’s 14 and my wife’s not doing the kind of travel that she used to do it, it works in that ultimately that’s what it’s all about. You have to do what’s right for your lifestyle and so it all within my hour.

Stephen:                             [12:48]                     I’m listening to this. It sounds like there was a point though in your mind that the switch went from, I’ve got to leave this. I’ve got to run away from this because that’s what it always feels like you’re running away from something until accepting and saying, wait a second. My perspective is wrong. I’ve got it made. I’ve got the dream job that everybody, because I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, like, oh my God, I would want to do what you do. I can, you know, and they don’t have the personality to do right, but I’m just saying no. What was the switch that turned, that almost get gave you permission to say, wait a second. Life is really good. What the heck am I doing? Running away from something? What? Do you remember what it was?

Jay:                                        [13:28]                     Yeah, absolutely. I think that a big portion of it happened when I switched positions because I’ve, I’ve held a lot of roles within the company I’m with now. I’ve worked with the same company. I’ve been in the industry for 23 years and again, it’s like people that you’re right, people do say, Oh, you have the dream job. It’s like, yeah, I get to go talk with chefs and drink wine. I host dinners, I go on Nice trips, you know, they don’t see the quote as you have to hit at the end of the month, like a used car salesman. But you know, that’s, that’s part of the fun for me too. That’s part of the, I love that pressure of the month end and let’s hit the numbers and then you hit it every month and you’re like, yeah, let’s do it again next month. And. But the thing that was the switch for me is when I went from working back to crazy hours again because like when I was a distributor when I was a sales rep and I was calling a grocery stores and I was working these 100 hour weeks.

Jay:                                        [14:17]                     Yeah, I would have run away from that easily. And it took me about four years to get literally just burned out on it. And then fortunately a supplier came to me, sutter home at the time now trying. Carol came to me and said, you know, we want you to come work for us and this was the chance I was waiting for. And then I’ve held various supplier positions and until, until I was with a company that I am now, which is constellation brands and you know, working in various roles because the company just kept buying out other companies. And we need you to sell spirits now. Now we need you to sell wine and spirits. Now I sell only fine wine and it’s great because I sell brands that people want. I still brands that I almost have to just say I can only let you have this month.

Jay:                                        [14:56]                     It’s not like really pushing a brand. It’s not really selling it. So I sell a brand called the prisoner and I don’t have enough to make it from vintage to vintage. That’s the problem I deal with. I don’t have enough domain. That’s a very good problem to have. It’s imagine if you had something like that on Amazon where it’s like you’re your worst nightmare is like, can I get enough? And you’re just, you know, you’re printing money with it, you know? So that was when it’s like things started clicking and you know, it’s like this is, I really do enjoy what I do. And it got to the point where I looked at the other things that I will. And that’s what I was going to go and have fun. You were doing scanner monkey, you were doing fba. And at that point were you starting to do merge?

Jay:                                        [15:41]                     We’ll probably all three at that point. Oh, I was, I was a late bloomer on merge. So then you were only doing scanner monkey, which only is lot. I mean it was a lot. And, and I was running the FBA business, right. Which as you know, we all know can be time consuming if it’s just you or maybe you and one other person. So at the time it was just me and my son that were, you know, shopping and shipping and packing and all that. And uh, you know, once, once he was gone it was like this isn’t fun for me anymore. And I, that’s when I, you know, took a good hard look at, okay, what, what could I do around my fulltime job that doesn’t require, you know, the shopping, looking for the clearance items or doing online arbitrage or you know, researching wholesale items or whatever. And that’s when Merck’s came into my life and I was again, Chris Green was talking about this about a year before finally taking them seriously, you know, and I wished I had gone on when he was like, you need to get involved with this. I’m like, ah, I don’t know. I have learned that lesson

Stephen:                             [16:45]                     when Chris Green talks about something, I sign up even though I don’t take action, I just signed up. So I’m in early. So I signed up for merchant way back when he said it did nothing.

Jay:                                        [16:55]                     But that is a lesson for like a year whenever he says, yeah, I do.

Stephen:                             [16:59]                     Even if you don’t get to it because it really gives you an advantage. So what was attractive to so, so you know, I’m just thinking about this because what I did here, you already say is that the things that you learned in Fba apply to your current business, that, that you know, a supply and demand that you know, the ability, right? I mean you see correlations there. Clearly. What about with merge an FBA? I mean, what do you think allowed you to get into merge and scale it? I mean because you’ve got a pretty good scale, but what was it that you learned that you’ve been able to apply to a lifestyle business because you didn’t give up on Amazon, you just found a piece of it that works for your designed lifestyle?

Jay:                                        [17:42]                     Exactly. Well, with Amazon Fba, it’s uh, the, the basic lesson I think for anybody, ground floor of all of this is you have to maintain a high end, but you can’t make money unless you are just chock full of good inventory and that requires you to spend money. So you’d have to spend money to make money. And to a certain extent that’s true with merge, but the, the, the money you’re spending is, is for designers if you go that route, which is me, I’m not interested in learning photoshop and learning how to design it. That’s just not my style. I’d rather just hire somebody who I know is going to be able to do in five minutes what it would probably take me three hours to. So I’ll just pay somebody, you know, that I find through upwork or through online jobs, Ph, who that’s their life is designing and just give them a few designs a day, approve it, you know, slap it on Amazon and see what sells and it’s the same premise.

Jay:                                        [18:41]                     It’s, you know, the more inventory you have, the better chances you have of selling something. And the thing that really clicked for me was one interview I heard with Chris and Chris Green and Michael Essec and that way because I was getting frustrated at the start because it’s, you know, you do merge two, it’s a very slow beginning and it’s like, you know, you, you, it’s, you start off getting a couple dozen shirts sold and the first few months and that’s really frustrating. You know, it’s not like Amazon where you can send it a bunch of stuff and you know, hey, if it sells well you in the first one you can, you could instantly make money. Exactly. So it’s a, it’s a long day or per hundred is painful to get that first hundred sales. Oh my God. It took forever. It absolutely. Absolutely. And I, you know, like I said, I started late, I was on April 2017 and everybody else is already doing it for like a year or more and it was the wild west where you could slap up any old ugly design and it would sell, you know, now it’s a little bit more competitive.

Jay:                                        [19:35]                     You have to really know your stuff, you have to be able to pump out good designs, quality designs and have good keyword research behind it. But those first few months are, they’re very frustrating, very challenging and it’s hard to kind of keep yourself motivated until I listened to that interview and Michael said, and I remember this to this day, he’s like, if you get into the proper mindset that you will sell probably one to two of your have 10 shirts you are producing that you’re creating, then it makes it easier. And that’s the problem I was having with like black. I like, you know, 30, 40, 5,100 shirts up and I’m only someone like three of them or four or five or what have you. And once I heard that as like, okay, all right, then I’m fine, I’m where I should be and I just need to continue to keep my head down and just grind through this.

Jay:                                        [20:26]                     And I did. I just kept pumping in designs. If something wasn’t selling, I’d take it down, I put in something new, I’d try to chase some trends here or there, but you know, keep my eyes on the evergreen designs as well. And it just slowly built up and to me, my saving grace was also listening to people like, yeah, I really enjoyed Matt Carlotz interview with you. And he started talking when he got his first big pop was like for a, I think it was for leap year, if I’m not mistaken. I think you’re right. Yep. Yeah. And so it’s like, that was for me when, when I got those sales I realized, you know, hey, I can do something with it. I’m speaking like I’m matt now. But the same thing for me when we hit the eclipse and I sold hundreds of eclipse shirts, I’m like, wow, this is great.

Jay:                                        [21:09]                     If I can get on top of some other trends and and ride that way while I’m also selling these other things and you’re actually making money because the first few months when I was paying for designers, I’m losing money. I’m using all my royalties for my other businesses like cyber monkey deals in scanner society. I’m pumping that into my other business and see, here’s the thing. This is where my fulltime job also comes in handy. I don’t have to live off these, you know, income streams. I have the ability to fall back on my full time job, which I enjoy anyways while I’m building this business and so people that are like, Hey, quit your job as soon as possible. I’m like, that’s not a good idea. Wait, let’s just start.

Stephen:                             [21:51]                     No, I think you just made something that really I think we can dig a little deeper in and I think it could use some clarification however it. Andy always says this about Ra. If you’re going to get into private label, don’t stop doing Ra. Use Ra for your cashflow. Keep that cash flow coming in because you’re going to need it because our po is, is a longer play, right? It takes time to get lunch. Right? But you’re saying basically the same thing. Stay in your job and then keep testing the waters. Try FBA trial or a trial way. Try Private label, try wholesale, try, merge, try kindle books and all the other stuff that Chris would tell you that are out there. And then see what flows. For me, this is my, my personal, uh, what happened for us is that when I started making so much money, it’ll, it almost took the relief off of work. It was like, it was like a change for me, my, my whole attitude and, and don’t get me wrong, I liked what I did. I just, it almost gave me permission to be like, ah, like both sides kind of gave. Is that kind of weird?

Jay:                                        [22:56]                     Yeah, no, I completely relate to that. And you do make different decisions when you’re under that financial pressure versus being able to relax a little bit. Knowing that it’s like, look, this is a mistake. That’s fine. A mistake is like, you know, I always say a mistake is like tuition, you’re paying money, but you’ve learned something. You may have lost the money, but you learned a lesson and now you know what you can do based off of that lesson that you’ve learned.

Stephen:                             [23:24]                     Don’t make fatal decisions, right? Don’t make it a live or die decision. Everything you do, if it’s live or die, that’s a bad plan because you have to lose once and you’re dead, right?

Jay:                                        [23:35]                     Not a good question. Always have plan B. I’m a big plan B guy for sure. There is. Yeah. And, and that’s why I’m a big believer in diversifying income streams mean I have three other income streams besides my, my full time job and I’m working on a fourth one now, you know, I’m getting involved with Etsy, my, I’m building up my niche store or nice store and uh, you know, let’s see where that goes. And then this year I’m going to look into KDP, kindle publishing as well because I have some good ideas for like wine journals and things of that nature. So it’s like, you never know. You never know what’s gonna happen now.

Stephen:                             [24:10]                     Well, that’s a good point. You’re talking about doing things and because I kind of know some of your products that used to sell Fba, it’s related to stuff that you’re into.

Jay:                                        [24:20]                     Absolutely. And with merge this the same thing. I mean I’m in the wine and spirits industry. What do you think? One third of the shirts that I sell, that’s their wine and spirits base shirts because I’m in there, I am fully involved and it’s like I give you an example and I’m not. I’m not giving away anything that is going to become a saturated niche because I set it on your interview, but there was a time when I was working in the field and I was selling a prosecco. I have Rafino was one of my brands and I’m selling prosecco and one of my buyers like, uh, yeah. I mean if my wife I. that’s pretty much all she drinks her. I understand. She bit me into prosecco. It’s her fault. I like it. Yeah, it’s good stuff. It’s good stuff. Very popular. And so I’m in this account, this retail account, and the guy who’s talking about prosecco pong and I’m like, what are you talking about?

Jay:                                        [25:06]                     Seco Pong. It’s like beer pong, but you play it with like these big champagne plastic champagne glasses and you throw a pink ball like a pink ping pong ball and then when you, when you land it and people are drinking just like with beer, beer pong, but it’s called prosecco pong. And so I looked it up online and sure enough Amazon had it and it was like selling like crazy. It was ranked under like 10,000 and I looked on merge and there was not a single perseco pong shirt. Then I looked at the trademark. There was no trademark for prosecco upon I think because it was just so new. So it’s like, well let me get in early on this. So I’ve developed like 25 shirts that said, you know, prosecco Pong, you know, takes a lot of balls to play this game, you know, or Prosecco, princess.

Jay:                                        [25:52]                     And it’s got like a pink ball bouncing into a prosecco glass in those sold really well for awhile. Now that trend is since come and gone. But that is an instance of, you know, take advantage of wherever you are. If you don’t think it’s, I call my job as a time suck at this. What do you do? What is your job? You know, it. Take advantage of the information, the insight information you have on that job, and parlay it into making some shirts that very few people may know about or are designing at the time and in, and go with that.

Stephen:                             [26:26]                     I just think, uh, now let me, let me take a guess on etsy. You would stay in that theme. Is that fair?

Jay:                                        [26:34]                     Uh, well I’m not actually. It’s part of my niche. Yes. But I mean it logically.

Stephen:                             [26:39]                     Here’s what, here’s what I always say, right? You’re in that world. Do you live and breathe? You see the problems in that world. You have challenges. And if you can solve those challenges because you’re not the only one having them, right? That’s logical, right? I had a barbecue guy on who his best group of people, his best research team, where the barbecuers, because they would talk about the problems they have. His job was to fix it and then he bring it to them. He’d get them to say, yeah, this is great man. It would be great if it would do this too, and then that became his whole laboratory and so as you’re doing these things, I mean every one of these things, like you said, even the prosecco Pong, you learn something and then you can. You also understand trends and understand what a trend is be besides evergreen. I think that’s a powerful a notation to take their.

Jay:                                        [27:27]                     Absolutely. And then there’s the tangents that run off of your trends. Too many sample. The wine industry. Well, who do I deal with? Restaurant Tours. Idea was chefs. I deal with foodies. People that are not only passionate about wine, but they’re passionate about food and I learned new food terms and not even know. You know, I have to tell me what that means. I’ve never heard that before. And then I’d take that and I turned it into a shirt and now I do a lot of chefs shirts and sous chef shirts and because those are my customers. So it’s like I’m always asking people what you don’t realize is that, you know, it’s not just, I love all the research tools that are out there. Neil last and is a friend of mine and so good. Yeah. Oh extremely smart. And you know, so merchant former is a big part of what I do.

Jay:                                        [28:11]                     But I’d say 50 percent of what I do is just me out in the world asking questions or looking, you know, I’m out at the mall with my daughter or something. I’m looking at other people’s tee shirts and you can find spot trends that way or you look at a design. Give you another example. My brother, he’s a, an amazing guitar player. He has like nine axes hanging in, is a music room. He’s got his own sound studio and everything. And uh, he had a shirt on one day that said celebrate diversity. Again, I’m not, I’m not really giving out any secrets right now. This is a popular niche that is, I mean it’s still doing well, but it’s so saturated right now. Is that something where I’d say, Oh, you need to jump in on this. There’s like 200, 300, 400 shirts that say that, but it had a bunch of guitars on it.

Jay:                                        [29:00]                     So you know, you see a les Paul Gibson and all these different kinds of guitars. So I thought I could do that with wine, red wine, white wine, Rosacea, bubbly champagne. So I created the very first celebrate diversity wind shirt in my, my biggest success also became my biggest frustration because I just threw up one shirt and this is when Ashley was working from Ashley favorites, who I know works for you as well. Uh, she called me. She was like my assistant at the time and she called me. He’s like, you’re not going to believe what this shirt is doing. And I get online and it’s like 30 shirts in a day, 40 shirts in a day, 50 shirts in a day. I was like, Holy Shit, Nike’s. And as I should have taken that and made like 50 other variations of it. No, I didn’t even think about it.

Jay:                                        [29:48]                     I just let it ride. And I was surfing that wave as long as I could until the copycats came in and uh, then eroded the price and I was selling it for like 20 bucks. And then it’s like, now, you know, it still sells because I was one of the first ones, but it’s selling, you know, two to three a week versus 40 slash 50 a day because everybody else is in there. And we split the pie up a little bit more. But, uh, you know, again, it’s like I just took an idea and remixed it.

Stephen:                             [30:14]                     Well, yeah, you took it, you took two ideas and you merge them. You took an idea and merged into something that, you know, so close. So if I’m in podcast world, I mean, it’s a good example because I have some podcast shirts. I mean, it’s, it’s when you start thinking about, so if somebody came from the sales world, right? Um, how would you take that? Let’s just use the celebrate diversity into sales. Just generic. They sell potato chips. Would it be different? I guess you’ve got to be careful of a well, but you can have pretzels, chips and candy, right? Generic salty snacks, salty snacks. So. So things snacks, chocolate versus salt or do you just now? I mean it’s this hard to turn off sometimes. I mean if your family like turn it down a little bit, well you’ll come on by Fba to. It’s never going to shut up.

Jay:                                        [31:03]                     He’s like, you’re talking way more about Fba then you are about wanting. Because I used to be this total cork dork and that’s like, oh. And I’d go and talk to my wife about a new wine we had or hey this restaurant just opened up and we need to go there. And it was just all about the restaurant world in the wine world and now it’s like everything becomes an idea for a shirt. And it’s funny thing is you want to get my best ideas for shirts

Stephen:                             [31:25]                     kids. They say that and

Jay:                                        [31:27]                     a lot of time with my daughter. Yeah. I spent a lot of time with my daughters and you know, work my life around their schedules and a lot of times I’ve walked my little one to the bus stop and like I’ll see some girl wearing this little panda shirt and I’m like, that’s really cool. I was like, well, if you could make a shirt, what would you make? Is like, oh, I do a panda riding a Unicorn and that would say besties underneath it or what? And they have all these crazy ideas and I’m like, okay, and then I’ll come home and I’ll make it and then I’ll put it online and I’m thinking this isn’t going to sell. Nope itself and becomes one of my best sellers for awhile. So it’s like. And it starts with, of course the neighbor’s mom going, hey, I created this shirt.

Jay:                                        [32:03]                     Your daughter gave me the idea, I’d like to buy you one because you know, it’s, this is a thank you for your daughter for coming up with the idea and then you know, and then she’ll buy another one for some other friends and then she’ll leave a review or what? I’m not asking. Yeah, I’m not doing anything illegal here, but it’s like if she wants to leave a review, that’s, that’s fine. You know, and, and she paid for. It’s a verified purchase because that certainly means a lot more. And Cindy, you’re buying the first shirt yourself. Oh yeah, yeah. I, you know, to me, you know, what am I going to. Okay. So let’s, let’s take a look at it as versus Fba. FBA. I used to sell liquid supplements and I’d spend like a good 20 [5:30] on some of the brands and you know, turn around and sell them for like 50 or above.

Jay:                                        [32:45]                     But you know, you’re investing that much every single time and it’s a lot of money. I mean that used to lay out like 25 grand to do this. I’m buying a shirt at the cost because I put it up at the cost to begin with. So I put it up at like 1295, you know, you’re making a few pennies off of that and I’ll buy the 1295 and then I’ll jack the price up to like 60 and 95. You know, after I buy the first couple, that’s a very small investment, like, why wouldn’t you do that? You know, of course there’s a proof of concept, right? If your daughter is wearing that shirt or her friends wearing it and somebody’s like, wow, that’s an awesome shirt. I won’t want to know. Let me go get the. Let me go get my dad. Oh, you want a, you want a shirt that has squirrels pulling Santa Claus on a sleigh?

Jay:                                        [33:28]                     Okay, I did that too. And it sold. My wife says that for one of Andy’s wife’s shirts, uh, she saw his wife wearing a shirt. She’s like, I want that. And she goes, hey, it’s my emergency. Bought it. Now we’re New York City a couple of weeks ago and everybody sees it and it’s like, I want that. She has a little thing with the here. Here’s how you get it. Now my wife is out there being the ambassador for Andy’s wife selling these shirts and I’m like, hello, you have a merchant account to, you should do it for us. But it’s the point is, is exactly what you’re saying is that all of a sudden people are like, wow, that’s awesome. I’d like that too. And it’s great to be able to merge those worlds because you know, everybody’s like, oh, I like Amazon because I can just put something.

Jay:                                        [34:06]                     I don’t have to deal with people and I don’t have to get out there and sell it. I don’t have to go door to door with. Why not? Why not just sell it to your friends? Why not talk to everybody about it? Why not wear the shirt yourself and just see what people think about it and were. Or even send an email or 13 bucks. How, how different does that make the relationship with your daughter? Because she be. Especially girls, I mean, this is such a powerful thing to do is you’re teaching her how to basically, you know, wait effort gives me reward. Wait what? And you can teach her a real life example. How different is that conversation? It’s, it’s, it’s really powerful. It’s so impactful. And my daughter, uh, I mean, I, I’ll tell you flat out, it’s like I spent a lot of time with my family, but I do spend a lot of time with my family in my office.

Jay:                                        [34:55]                     I have my own. When we bought this House that I’m in now, we bought this two and a half years ago. It was kind of like our dream house. It’s like, let’s get it now while the kids can really enjoy it. I don’t want to buy a dream house when it’s like, you know, I’m about to retire. Let’s, let’s do something that makes this, the Koolaid House. So all the other kids want to come over and play and swim and, and, you know, jump on the trampoline or whatever happened in that pool for those. And I want those, uh, those hot pepper, a Jalapeno Margarita. I’ll be in that pool. You want. All right, go ahead. Sorry. It at all has to do with the amount of seeds you put in there. The seats. Anyway, so. So anyway, so like she’ll come in here and then she’ll hang. I have a little couch in my office and she’ll hang out and she’ll play on her ipad and she’ll look at youtube videos and then she was like, Hey Daddy, why don’t we do this?

Jay:                                        [35:41]                     And then she’ll give me an idea on a write it down. I was like, hey, that’s good. Let’s try that, you know, and then we’ll try. Sometimes it sells, you know, sometimes it doesn’t, you know, but she’ll come in here and she was like, what, what did it do? Did we sell any yet? See that compensation. But that’s the one that one sold in the one where the, the squirrels riding the Unicorn. How one, so good job baby. And it’s like they’re involved in it now. They’re not actively doing any of it because she’s still a little young to kind of grasp all this stuff and had get online. But I mean eventually she will be. And then my other daughter who’s in band, she gives me ideas for band and marching band and things like that. And then, you know, she stunned when something sells.

Jay:                                        [36:19]                     Like really that sold. I was like, yeah, and then you also get to learn the slang too. Like I just learned the term weird flex, but okay. And I’m like, I did, I’ve never heard that in my life for me say really? Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s essentially, it’s, I guess it’s based off a youtube video which need a lot of shirts are based off memes and popular youtube videos of whatever’s trending. But uh, you know, I was like, well, what would you put on a shirt? It’s like, why don’t we do something with reindeers and say weird flex, but okay. And I’m like, well, what the heck does that mean? He like, well, you know, it was like a youtube video. Some guys like flexing and the other one’s making fun of him and he’s like, all right, weird flag. But okay. And it just became like a saying for teenagers to each other when one thought they were being impressive and the other one’s like, whatever, you know. So just talk very bizarre stuff, you know, but

Stephen:                             [37:10]                     awesome. I mean, to me that is, that’s how the relationship becomes more than how was your day? Good, okay. Boom, and then that’s it. That’s the interaction.

Jay:                                        [37:20]                     Let’s talk about this conversation. By the way, I never asked that question. I was like, tell me two interesting things about your data. How was your day? Because that’s always going to be good

Stephen:                             [37:28]                     or it’s bad or whatever. Yeah, I like that. Alright, so let’s go here because I think this is powerful. So the fact that you didn’t leave your job, the fact that you didn’t give up your career, that you found your lane in and again it’s because you kind of gave yourself permission, you know what I mean? Your, your approach to it changed and some of it was because of the environment changed in that and you’ve got different responsibilities. When tragedy, did you think that we’ve got to be. I mean was it your risk meter going off in the back? If you look back, would you say that your risk meter kind of pushed you back to. And then when tragedy struck, and we’ll talk about tragedy in a second, you were in a good place and it was like, uhhh, Kinda, you know, if you’re religious or whatever, or Karma or whatever. Do you feel like that, you know what I’m going.

Jay:                                        [38:23]                     When when tragedy struck, I was, I was glad to have my full time job. Is that essentially,

Stephen:                             [38:28]                     I mean, and, and, and perhaps one because your risk meter said it wasn’t right for me to. I’m staying with it for some reason. I don’t know why. And then when tragedy struck your life.

Jay:                                        [38:43]                     Uh Huh. Oh yeah. Yeah. I, I absolutely was glad that I’ve always made that decision to stay there. There’s always been moments of weakness. I, I won’t lie to you. It’s has been some times where it’s like, you know, everybody has bad days at work, you know, everybody has bad four letter word work sometimes can be. And it’s again, everybody sees the that says they want my job. They see only the fun part of it, the, you know, the wine tastings and the dinners and the trips and all that. But they don’t see, you know, grinding out the numbers and, and working with, you know, working with a rep which would be a dream scenario for some people where you’re going from restaurant to restaurant, you’re selling wine after awhile. Sometimes even that can be a grind. Man, I have to be on today. I have to be kind of on my best behavior professional.

Jay:                                        [39:31]                     And even though this is in the background is, it’s fun. It also can be very stressful because it’s like if I don’t make the right impression on this person and they don’t purchase the wine and you know, I don’t make my number at the end of the month, there’s going to be consequences. So there’s still that in my job, just like there is with anybody sales, just sales or sales, you have a number to hit. Some jobs may be easier than others for sales. Wine is a very competitive industry. And so, you know, there’s been days like now it’s like wow, if I could just, you know, maybe quit this and just do my own thing and be on my own schedule. But yeah, I mean I’m, I’m on a, I have a schedule, I have to be certain places at certain times, but I’ve learned to integrate everything within that and it was data that was another light bulb for me.

Jay:                                        [40:21]                     It’s like, yeah, now I’m traveling all over. I drive to San Antonio, three hour drive, Austin, two and half hour drive. Spend a couple of days there. Can you take advantage of the windshield time? You know, listened to interviews, listen to your podcasts, listen to Youtube, listen to whatever, make phone calls or you know, get inspired what have you. So you just learn to work the. And that’s why Fba, I had to walk away from it because I didn’t have the time to actually build into stores. Something had to give. That was the thing that wasn’t love. You weren’t loving it like you did, but you got to answer my question. No. Now tragedy strikes. Houston floods. Your House is never going to flood. It’s not been flooded in the 100 year flood. Yeah, you’re safe. We’re in 100 year flood plain and we have the 100 year storm once and it floods around my neighborhood, but my neighbor, my house doesn’t get flooded.

Jay:                                        [41:10]                     Then a year later harvey hits and uh, my house does get flooded and you know, and it’s, I try to be, the glass is half full kind of guy and that, hey, we had six inches and you know, that’s terrible. Six inches because you still have to rip up two feet of drywall over. You’re all over your house, rip up all the carpet. It’s a pain in the ass. But I had neighbors that had three feet. So it’s like, Eh, it could have been worse. Could have been that guy. I had neighbors that, you know, they weren’t home when it happened. They were on vacation and all of their, you know, sentimental things, photo albums, I’ll just gone. And so at least I was here to see the water starting to seep into doors and I was able to lift furniture and put it up on bricks and, and you know, make sure that everything was ready to where it’s like, okay, well the damage is done, but I’ve at least minimize the damage and nothing really valuable like keepsakes are going to be destroyed as a result of this.

Stephen:                             [42:02]                     But do you sit and think about, and maybe I’m making a connection where there is no connection, but the fact that you stayed in your job allowed you to weather that storm better phrase financially because if you had to pack boxes and um, this is not meant to say that you shouldn’t pick boxes. Don’t get me wrong, I packed boxes. I’m in a warehouse, I got to AIPAC boxes. But because for you made that choice for comfort, you didn’t fail. Right? Even though some would say you did, you didn’t end look at for you. Look at what it’s been able to do, I guess. Yeah, to me. So you still, you get the best of both worlds. Even when, when the shit happens, right? Yeah. That’s a powerful, powerful place to be. If you had to worry about selling this week, uh, inventory and do you get what I mean? So, I mean,

Jay:                                        [42:57]                     hey allows a lot of that. And I walked away from all my jobs. I mean literally I didn’t work at the wine job either. I’m very fortunate that I work for a company that was like, Hey, we’re here for you. Whatever you need, you know, we’ll pay for storage units if you need to like store furniture or boxes or what have you. Uh, you know, take as much time as you need to get the house fixed up. So there was a month there where my whole job was just, you know, walking around and, and working with contractors and working with, you know, God bless them. Neighbors that came over to help me rip up carpet. I mean I was just a carpenter demolishing my house for a few weeks. I didn’t do merge and at the time I wasn’t doing an Fba anyways, I, I had gotten, I went full in on merge.

Jay:                                        [43:37]                     I walked away from Fba. So, but I didn’t do that either because I didn’t have the time, so I’m not uploading new shirts, which, you know, that’s something you need to continue. Even if you have shirts that are selling, you need to always be uploading new shirts, you know, you never know when trends are going to stop or start or what have you. I walked away from that. I walked away from everything. My job was take care of my family, six of my house and at the time we had my father in law. My Wife’s dad, he’s lives in assisted living a few blocks away. They had to evacuate all of them because they got flooded. So I had him upstairs. He’s crippled. He can’t walk. He’s in a wheelchair. So I’m like taking care of him. My wife had broken her ankle. I mean it was one of those things, and I don’t mean this to be, you know, sound like a pun or anything, but when it rains, it pours.

Jay:                                        [44:21]                     My wife broke her ankle. I had my crippled father-in-law’s stay in here. I’m taking care of them. We had two new puppies that haven’t been housebroken, you know, we’re in this flooded house. We’re basically living upstairs, you know, we didn’t do the hotel thing and I’m just, I’m doing this stuff, but if it wasn’t for my full time job, you know, circling back around to that, none of that would be possible. I mean I would have to figure out a way to, you know, okay, I’m dead tired after working all day long, fixing up the house, but I still need to crank out like, you know, 30 designs on merge and I have to, you know, do this with my day job or whatever. But because of my day job being as supportive as they were, I didn’t have to worry about anything. The only thing I had to worry about was the financial aspect of it. You know, paying for the contracts says I didn’t have flood insurance. You know, we’re on 100 year flood plain. They told us you don’t need flood insurance. We had a flood last year and it just went around the neighborhood. We were fine. Were up on a hill. You couldn’t leave the neighborhood for like four days, but we’re fine. Yeah. Well,

Stephen:                             [45:22]                     to me, this is why I wanted to have you on with this conversation because I know there’s somebody who’s listening right now who’s working full time and probably miserable in their job because they’re only looking at the bad stuff because let’s face it, that’s the stuff that grinds at you every day, right? There’s you don’t leave a job for usually for one reason. It’s a thousand little reasons like you know, little slashes, right? That’s what kills you. However, if you sit back and you say, Hey, wait a second, that right there what you just described, that company paying you for that period of time, allowing you to get through that. If you work for that company, even though there’s a bunch of other problems, that probably erases a whole bunch of them and rather than adding the financial pressure, which is hard enough to add that risk to it.

Stephen:                             [46:04]                     There’s somebody listening right now is probably trying to make that decision and I just want them to make sure they take all that stuff into consideration because you can work two hours in the morning like I did. I’d come into my warehouse two hours in the morning, then I’d go to work at lunch, had come to my warehouse and work and then I go back to work and then at night I’d record my podcast at night from my house every single day, seven, well, five days a week, and then on the weekends I work in the warehouse. Every day. You do that for a while. If the timing doesn’t feel right, don’t let those pressures don’t go all in and make a yet a do or die decision. At least that’s me. And quite frankly, that’s Uj, right? It’s right.

Jay:                                        [46:44]                     Not Succumb to pressure because somebody else has quit their job that they hate. I mean everybody does it for different reasons and honestly I didn’t get into ecommerce. I didn’t get into Amazon Fba because I absolutely had to have more, you know, all this money and you know, wanted to be a millionaire and wanted to quit my day job. I got into it because I needed some help with medical bills for my daughter and that was the main reason I did and I found the book from Chris Green and you know, the, the, the FBA book from Chris Green and the rest is history. And then I got involved and I found I loved it and I was like, well this would be a nice second stream of income. And eventually I was thinking, well, I could possibly quit, but you know, I went back and forth on that and after awhile I just came to the decision that, no, I really don’t want to quit my day job. If that makes me tourist in your eyes, that’s fine. I don’t care if anybody says that about me. You know? It’s like

Stephen:                             [47:34]                     powerful though. I mean to me, again, as I sit back, it allowed you all that stuff you described, seeing Chris’s arbitrage, retail arbitrage book and going through all that. All those experiences have allowed you to get to where you are now, which in the beginning of this call we talked about how great your life is because you love what you do. You figured out you love what you do. You found the best place to do it in the on your terms almost, right. You almost designed right. You push for it for awhile and now it’s right and then yet you still get to stay in the ecommerce world. To me that’s an amazing, amazing place. I mean most people can’t get there. That’s all one or the other and you’re saying, no, it can be more than that. And to me that’s the power right now. Or you can have your wine and drink it to drag it to absolute shirt merchant. I’ve already got. I already got your weight. You write it down. Did you do a Cork dork shirt? Did you do that already? Have a cork dork sir. So I mean I heard that and I think that’s a good shot. I’m like, he had one of those

Jay:                                        [48:32]                     and now I’m doing. I’m doing a lot of good stuff on pop sockets to man, those things are starting to take off and it, it’s one of those things where it’s like when I first got into the merge I thought, I don’t know about this and then you know, you start getting your first successes and you’re like wow, this is, this can really be something. And then pop sockets and I’m like, how are we going to sell 1499 pop sockets and you look on on Amazon and there’s like all these like $8, $7 pops out, how are we going to compete with that? And I was like, well you know, I’m an early adopter, let me throw up a couple hundred of these and see what happens. And then he started selling and it’s like wow, this is incredible. And then you just go all in on that as well. And so, you know, wind, pop sockets are doing well for me. Even it’s just a picture, you know, I got one that’s just pictures of corks, just a pile of corks and that’s like somebody pop socket. So you just, you just never know, you just gotTa keep trying stuff and, and uh, you know, get those little happy surprises and then just build on that

Stephen:                             [49:31]                     to, you know, I mean, again, I get inspired when I talk to people and I, I get, I guess what I get is the, when I hear the thrill in your voice, you know, I’m sure there was a point where you didn’t have a thrill when your voice, when the tragedy struck, he didn’t have it thrown in your voice when you’re going through stuff with your foot. Right? Yeah. That’s not that. But now to hear that and still have you still excited about this business, this industry is very exciting to me. Okay. So I’ll put your contact information. I already have it and I’ll put that in. If somebody wants to follow up with you and they have questions, but let’s do this. This is, I think this is where you really shine. Let’s give advice to somebody who’s probably toiling with this decision right now. They’re sitting back, they’re stuck because they feel like their job is taking them nowhere. Although it could be a catalyst or they feel like they can’t get unstuck from where they’re at. What’s, what’s your advice? Well, I

Jay:                                        [50:28]                     mean, ultimately people say you have to have a certain personality to, to do something or you have to have a certain talent. And I think you can develop both of those. I think you can develop a personality of tenacity. Uh, and that’s so important. You have to be able to look at the bigger picture, you know, okay, you’re in a job you hate and you want to quit right away, but it’s just doesn’t make sense financially to do that. So you’ve got to figure out what hours can you work and set a goal for yourself, you know, whether like, I, I keep a journal every day. I mean, and it made you only write a few sentences here or there, but it’s basically what I did. I’m a big proponent of the compound effect. It’s one of my favorite books. I probably read it three times.

Jay:                                        [51:14]                     Yeah, great stuff. And it’s true. You know what he says? Even if you can only devote an hour of your day, you know, or you get up an hour earlier or you, you stay up two hours later. For me it’s, I’m more of a night owl, so it’s like when the kids go to bed, I’m in here from like [10:00] until midnight on cases one or two in the morning and um, you know, coming up with design ideas for shirts or, or what have you and you know, I just, I make it work and I say okay, here’s my goal. I need to be at 3,200 shirts within the next six months. And I say, what’s that going to take? If they take down this many shirts a day, I need to, you know, because after a few, like it used to be after 90 days they take your search down if it doesn’t sell.

Jay:                                        [51:59]                     And I was getting a few shirts say because my first designs were crap, let’s be honest. It’s, I didn’t know what I was doing and I was like, Hey, this is a great design. Thanks. And it’s like, no, that’s not a good design at all. But anyway, so you set a goal and you say this many shirts come down today, this means I have to put this many shirts up per day to 30 to 100. So why an arbitrary number like 3,200? Well, because that’s 80 percent of 4,000 and I want to go, I want to go up a tier two, 8,000 shirts. So that was my goal. So what is that going to take? Well that’s going to take about two to three hours a day. Where am I going to put in those hours? Is it going to be, you know, first thing in the morning, get up two hours early now.

Jay:                                        [52:36]                     That didn’t work for me. It’s going to be two hours at night. I can do it then. All right. And then you write in your journal every day I uploaded 40 shirts to get to my big goal. So you have to be and you have to be. Again, the tenacity comes in where you think to yourself, okay, I’ve got miserable days ahead, you know, with my job. And then working late nights on my side hustle. Here are my side gigs, side job, what have you, but in the end this is all going to pay out and it did. I had several months, several months where I couldn’t get above like 200 sales. I’d say like my good. My first year was rarely above 200 shirts a month. Okay. The last three months I sold 5,000 shirts and I made $11,000 in royalties. Last month I made more money for the first time with my merchant business.

Jay:                                        [53:33]                     Then my day job and my other two streams of income combined in one month. So it’s like you’ve got to be patient while you build this stuff up. It is not an instant return. You’ve got to have that patience and you have to be willing to put in a couple hours a day if your life doesn’t permit you to do, you know, a couple of, like a couple of hours. Come on, everybody can find two hours in their day, you know, but you have to be willing to do that and, and you know, figure out a way to do it around your family time, around your day job or what have you, figure out a way to integrate it into your life. I, I get a lot of flack because I’m a big believer in multitasking as I. Yeah, multitasking is just doing a lot of things poorly at the same time, but I always tell people there’s different kinds of multitasking.

Jay:                                        [54:20]                     To me, I do passive, inactive multitasking and what that means is like when I’m driving two and a half hours, I’m doing something productive in the car. Whether it’s listening to, you know, how I can better research keywords on merchant former. Like Neil does a lot of great videos on that or I’m listening to your interviews and getting inspired from people like Matt Carlot or I’m listening to an audio book, a like compound effect or the one I just read a or one recently. It was called the 18 minutes by Peter Bergman. Great Book, Great Book, and it’s basically just had to get a lot done in a day. We’ll play. So like things like that. How can you incorporate it into your lifestyle? Like you, I mean you, you went, you went to your warehouse at lunch, probably grabbed a quick sandwich or what have you when you worked around lunchtime, you worked at, into your.

Jay:                                        [55:09]                     So you have to be willing to do those things and uh, I know it’s kind of passe to say, but it’s like walk away from TV, walk away from listening to the radio or music in your car. Every spare moment you can give that. It’s not family time, quality time or you know, your day job. Figure out a way to work that side Gig until it becomes something that is not an overnight success. And it’s right now it’s struggling because this January I’m like man. So, but I look at that like, okay, instead of devoting all my time to merge, now I have some downtime when I’m not selling as many shirts and need to reprice every day and make sure everything where it needs to be for Christmas. Let’s build that etsy or you’ve been promising yourself for six months now. And so that’s what I’m doing. I’m, I’m bending the cost of the other because. Yeah, because the other ones, I mean ellen was not selling that much anyway, so it’s like I don’t need to pump in all kinds. So instead of my designers making merge search for me, they’re making etsy shirts. I mean, because let’s be honest, ed’s, he is a completely different marketplace and then merge. So do

Stephen:                             [56:12]                     you, you, uh, I mean, I, I just think what you said was so powerful again. Um, and that $11,000 makes you breathe in your regular job so much more because it’s, you have a whole different life perspective and I just think it’s so powerful. Okay. All right. I have his contact information out on this episode. Um, and I, I’m, I’m so inspired. I’m so thankful for your story and I, I just, I wish you and your family nothing but success this year. I know you’re going to have it, but I wish you continued success. Let me say it that way.

Jay:                                        [56:44]                     This is going to be a really good year, 2017 without a doubt. Worst Year of my life. Where’s your best year this year? This year. And even though it was the worst year of my life, I still take away a lot from 2007. I still learned a lot in 2017. I learned a lot about myself. I learned about my family and so yeah, I mean it sucked, you know, it’s like that book you embrace the suck before we’re going to suck less, but it will definitely suck less. There’s another shirt will suck less. Thanks a lot.

Stephen:                             [57:19]                     And he’s such a great guy. Such a, such a wonderful dad. I mean, that’s why I always look at people with their kids and he’s just, just has such great perspective of the relationship with his family and it just, it’s just so awesome. I also love the story. I mean, I, I love the story, but I love his story because his, let’s just face it, his description of the wine and then, um, and then finding the shirts that match that because he loves it or his description of, uh, using, um, uh, other, other terms and then applying them to something you love, that’s perspective because he loves it. That’s what I love about his story. And to me, I think if you start loving what you do instead of running away from what you do, your whole life could change and then maybe your health can change and then you have more energy and eventually your whole world improves. So that’s it. Reach out to me if I can help in any way. ECOMMERCE momentum.com, ecommerce momentum.com.

Cool voice guy:                  [58:17]                     Thanks for listening to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found@incomersmomentum.com. Under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and the lake us on itunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

About the author, Stephen

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.