392 : Tommy Griffith – You must be genuinely interested in your products to succeed

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For contact details, users can find me on Twitter @TommyGriffith, https://twitter.com/tommygriffith, and email me at Tommy@ClickMinded.com

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

 

Tommy:                               00:00:00               In my opinion, having built an Amazon Fba business and having worked in silicon valley and and having looked at how Internet companies grow. Yeah. If you look at the trajectory of Amazon, basic skews, right? The total number of things that they’re looking at, it’s increasing rapidly and I think that’s terrifying for Amazon sellers in general, but

Cool voice guy:                  00:00:20               welcome to the commerce momentum podcast where we focused on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson,

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Stephen:                             00:02:04               So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash photos, take a look at what you can do for your brand that you’re trying to get. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 392, Tommy Griffith. Um, great story. A very cool guy, a great background, you know, work in Seo for giant companies like paypal and then airbnb and historys. What what drew me into him is, you know, him creating a business and then, uh, after a bunch of non successful businesses he figured something out and he figured it out in a big way and it’s kind of driven his life, um, going forward. And some of his absolutes are pretty interesting to me. Some of the things that he’s talking about are just so common sense, but he didn’t learn them easily either. And I think that that’s the lesson is that none of this stuff is easy.

Stephen:                             00:02:57               Um, he used a couple of phrases, never heard this one to thousand day principle to get to replace your income a thousand days. Never heard that rule with them, but at three years, it’s going to take you three years to replace your income. I get people that reach out to me all the time, Steve, I need to make six figures by Friday. Well, Tommy’s going to tell you that’s just not realistic. And so therefore you’re going to disappoint and then you’re going to give up and then you’ve got to walk away. But if you knew you had to get there in three years or a thousand days, then you might break it down differently. So I think solid advice from a solid guy. Um, great story and some, some real functional entrepreneurial advice. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guests.

Stephen:                             00:03:38               It’s a different kind of guest, um, because he’s not a seller selling on Amazon, um, or selling on Ebay, although he’s got a big Ebay connection, uh, years ago. But I think the perspective he has working for big companies in the Seo field specifically definitely related to what we do, knows a lot about our business and went out on his own and I’m really interested to understand some of those things and how these big giant companies are making decisions without talking to us. Jeff Bezos never calls me. I’m always waiting for his call and yet they make changes and it affects me and so I think we were going to get some great perspective. I’m very excited about Tommy Griffith. Michael, welcome Tommy.

Tommy:                               00:04:20               Steven, are you saying Jeff doesn’t call you? You never know. You know, I was going to give him a marital advice. I’m married 32 years. I could’ve helped them there, but he did not, man, I think just you. You would have benefited from that. He needed, he needed some help for a minute. Yeah. The grass is not greener. Jeff, do not.

Stephen:                             00:04:36               I believe that the grass is not greener. It is not. Never so, but I think he’s done fairly well. What’s interesting about your story and then I’ll go right there because this, this was very interesting to me. You’re very not self deprecating, you’re very, your inward looking at your business compared to these other companies that started after you and they’re billion dollar companies and Tommy’s click minded companies. Not a billion dollar company yet. Is it?

Tommy:                               00:05:03               It’s, you know, we’re, we’re almost there. No, no, that’s a good perspective to have. You’re almost there. Yeah, right. We’re almost there at 0.1% of the way there. No, um, yeah, no, no, we’re not. But yeah, I did an analysis on, I feel like I’ve succeeded. I felt like I succeeded and then I took a look back and realize there’s multiple billion dollar companies that were started after my business and kind of wrote all my emotions out, uh, in a blog post. Sort of describing the whole process. Yeah.

Stephen:                             00:05:31               Failed. Because I think it’s really important for understand that, right? So here are a list of companies that were completed or that were created after click minded. Okay. So you were working on click money for eight years, and then all of a sudden these companies start lift 24 billion snapchat, 15 billion instacart, 7 billion Sophie, 4 billion all the way down to you, Udacity, while little dinky you Udacity, which I never even heard of 1 billion. And those are all by most imagination,

Tommy:                               00:05:58               very incredibly successful. And then there’s Tommy’s click minded. So did you fail? I mean, did you think you failed and now you got past it? Is that kind of the point of the article? Yeah. Um, so the, yeah, the point of the article did a little context for your, for your listeners. Yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m an Seo guy, been doing digital marketing for 10 years. Um, I’ve managed search engine optimization to two big companies before this paypal and Airbnb, hence the, hence the Ebay connection, the paypal. Right, right. We were actually owned by Ebay at the time and they’ve, they’ve spun off sense. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I had actually, I had to kind of, you know, like probably a lot of your listeners and you as well had a number of entrepreneurial seizures. Um, you know, throughout my, like after, after leaving university and I, I was probably on click minded was probably an attempt number 10 or 15, if you can.

Tommy:                               00:06:52               Um, yeah, I mean I was, I’m a pro at failing. You’re also a pro at launching ideas well, or did they make it to the launch phase or did they die before that? Usually, yeah. I mean every, every I like everyone was a little bit different and I had a cup, you know, one or two that I’ve worked on for six months to a year and a one or two that I’d worked on for a month. Um, sort of a lot of it stems, I’m not sure how familiar you are, your audience are with, you know, the four hour work week, Tim Ferriss style. Right? Yeah. And a lot of it stemmed from that, like getting to idea validation and all that. But um, yeah, the, the first bunch just kind of continue to fail over and over again. And then, uh, the one that seemed to hit, I was managing search engine optimization at paypal.

Tommy:                               00:07:38               My boss had asked me to put together sort of an SEO training course for my colleagues. Um, I ended up doing it and that turned into teaching search engine search engine optimization to, uh, on the weekends to startups in San Francisco. And that was a physical class like teaching face to face. Um, the business. I enjoyed it a lot. I, I like teaching a lot, but the business model was terrible. I mean, absolutely terrible, but I ended up being kind of the right place, right time for the online course revolution that, that we’re sort of in. We’re kind of in an online course renaissance right now. And in 2012 it was just sort of right place, right time with you to me. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them. Yeah. Online course marketplace started with them and uh, it grew and grew and grew and grew. And you know, within a few years my side project was generating more revenue than my salary at an airbnb. So you blow, you glossed by those little dinky companies, paypal and Airbnb. Um, those of us who are, especially in this world, we, we, we tend to be entrepreneurs. So we tend to stay in airbnbs whenever we can for the right reasons, the reasons that they state what people are looking for. Right. Um, when you think about your opportunities there, how do you walk away from that? I, I understand

Stephen:                             00:08:56               that the revenue got to be so high, but there’s something else. I mean, where do you work? Wow, I worked for paypal. That’s a big deal. Or I work for AIRBNB. How do you walk away from those? How do you get your ego in check? Is, is it because you hit half a million dollars in sales? I mean, is that what gets you there or is it because you can say you’re doing your own thing? I mean, you get what I’m asking. Yeah, I do.

Tommy:                               00:09:17               Um, and it, and it was really hard. I mean, I gotta be frank. Like I would, I will, I will never have a better job than I did at Airbnb. It was, it, it was amazing. It was, I got to work on a really tough, hard, awesome problems that my colleagues were fantastic. And it was just, uh, it was, it just feels like, oh, you know, this is really drinking the Koolaid. And the founder says this all the time, and I am a, um, I’m a, I’m a pure Zombie mode and I’m drinking the Koolaid. But the, the founders all truly believe it’s a once in a generation company and I think they’re right. And so it was, um, it was incredible. But yeah, I was, I had always had the entrepreneurial itch and I, I would actually argue that because the company was so great that I stayed longer than, than I would’ve normally. Right. Interesting. And so I was sort of ready to go a few years earlier when I replaced my salary, but stayed there for a few more years because I sort of wasn’t, wasn’t wrapped up yet. I had more things I wanted to accomplish. Um, and things like that. I was actually very much over the city of San Francisco. I was so sick as San Francisco, but really liked my job. So that was sort of what, what kept me there.

Stephen:                             00:10:26               When you think about those things, um, when leaving a job like that, there were usually, we used to say there’s not one reason somebody leaves. There’s a thousand little reason somebody leaves, but that San Francisco one could have been a big one. Um, when you think about your business now, now you know, in the precall we were talking about that you were in Bali for a long time. Now he’s in, it’s very depressing where you’re at. It’s terrible. Weather is snowing it right. Right now,

Tommy:                               00:10:49               right. In Honolulu, Hawaii had terrible, terrible today. But

Stephen:                             00:10:55               you know, that lifestyle, those choices, you didn’t have that when you’re working with Airbnb, correct.

Tommy:                               00:11:01               Yeah, correct. That’s, that’s been sort of the, the massive benefit. I, I’m now two years out, I’ve been traveling and growing my business and that was sort of the dream, right? To the, you know, reading up on all these people being digital nomads and running remote businesses in remote teams and things like that. That was a huge alert to all of it. Owning your schedule, owning, owning

Stephen:                             00:11:22               the, the freedom to do what you want and work on what you want to work on. Um, that was sort of first, second and third place for me for sure. When you think about that, it’s interesting cause I, I want to go a little deeper on this. Um, owning your own business and owning your own time. There’s responsibility, but that comes with that because when you were working for Airbnb, you had a project, right? And I’m sure it was huge and deep, big part of it may be running it, whatever, but it was still a project, meaning that there was a time frame that you had that I’m sure there were people pressuring you, but it’s different. You still got paid every Friday or every other week. It was

Tommy:                               00:11:54               now owning your own business, the results or your fault, good or bad, right? Yeah. How’s that? Yeah, for sure. And I think, um, you know, I think for people that are currently working and they’re trying to make the jump to entrepreneurship, it’s, it’s really interesting because I, I, that was me for six years and I know exactly what you’re going through and when I look back on making the jump, I still would do it again with all the risk involved. Right. With that said, it is so like the, the amount of risk and effort and time is, um, is so underrated and I don’t think people talk about it enough. And the post we were kind of mentioning, maybe we can link it in the show notes, but the post were kind of mentioning where I’m summarizing the last years of my life. I was, you know, I worked on this thing for four for a full three years and uh, I got to this point, there’s this concept a lot of remote entrepreneurs talk about called the thousand day principle.

Tommy:                               00:13:01               I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. Yeah. So, um, it’s, it’s pretty interesting. The, the basic concepts go on, go on, go going around at a bunch of entrepreneur forums right now is that you need about a thousand days to get your side project up to your current salary levels. So three years, about three years. And a lot of people don’t, don’t get that. Um, and they think it will happen tomorrow and they’re looking for the quick hack and they’re looking for the entrepreneur.com article. That’ll do, then I’ll change their, their trajectory. Right? But, um, three years is a lot. It’s a lot of time and it took a long time. And so the, one of the things I mentioned in that post was that I was walking by a, um, a panda express and set in the window now hiring managers, paying $65,000 a year. And I’m sitting there going, are you kidding me?

Tommy:                               00:13:52               And I went back and looked at the numbers and even though I thought my business had succeeded by the third year, I’m just pulling up the numbers now. By the third year, the business as a side project was generating $117,000 a year. Um, that still was less than right. If the first year was 11,000, the second year was 49,000, the third year was 117,000. Those three years I still generated less revenue than I would have managing a panda express with no with no college degree. Right. And so I think the, I think it’s very reasonable if you’re a little bit nervous about making the jump, I think it’s very reasonable to ask whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. Like it’s risky. It might not work. In fact, to be honest with it often doesn’t work. And, um, I was sort of looking back and thinking like, Oh, you know, I’m the man, I’m killing it, I’m super successful. And then I look back and I’m like, wow, I would’ve made more money working at a head of pants, grass. You’re right. And so, um, yes, that, that trade off is there for sure. And I wrestled with it often.

Stephen:                             00:14:53               When you would, you, you said you would do it again, but would you do it the same way a man? Is that a hard question? Well, it’s a great question and let me me go further on there. You had seven or eight different non successes prior, I’m not going to call them failures. There are non successes. I’m assuming you learn, what does Bob Ross called them happy little accident like that learn something in each one of those. So now, I mean I would assume the second one was different than the first one. Do you learn some things in the first one then the second one and so you’re eight or nine versions in and you’re still hesitant to say you would do it again the same way?

Tommy:                               00:15:36               Yes. So I would do the last one that works the same way. Yeah, of course. Um, I think the, the one thing I learned that I that I can pass onto someone, I’m playing this game and make doing this like sort of decision tree decision calculus on when to go. The one thing I highly recommend is another term I’ve heard coin to called exit velocity. The basic idea is if you’re currently working for someone, do everything in your power to sort of get paid to work on your side project. Right? So for me, I did a PR and I didn’t know this at the time, but looking in hindsight, it ended up being a fairly good idea. I kind of parlayed, you know, managing search engine optimization at two of the biggest websites in the world. And then I use the product I created to train up my internal team at those companies.

Tommy:                               00:16:30               Right? The, the, the ICAK, sorry to use the brand from those companies on my product. Oh, Tommy’s SEO manager from paypal and from Airbnb, right. I use the product internally and then kind of by the time I was ready to go, um, the product already had users, traction, traffic, all of a sudden it was just inherently less risky to make the jump. Right. So exit velocity is basically any current, um, you know, it’s, it’s current connection do you have at your company and sort of branding you have from your company, any sort of professional connections. And anytime you can tilt the trajectory up a little bit before you make the leap and get that like, you know, proverbial running start, it can be really helpful. My first attempt at this, I was a young dumb kid with a buddy of mine and we tried to start a business and just had no idea what to do. Borrowed money from family and friends and credit cards and like spent a year on it and just had had gone nowhere with it. Right? But that by the time I left, um, these other companies I had already had a lot of momentum. So if you’re, if you’re making that decision calculus now, like, uh, acquiring as much exit velocities as possible. It’s like loading up a cannon right in pointing it up and like trying to load that up as much as possible before you pull the trigger I think is a really wise idea.

Stephen:                             00:17:42               Well, I’m trying to liken this to my ecommerce world and I’m thinking to myself, okay, so I think Tommy’s advice would be, start on Amazon. It, let’s say you’re creating a, Steve’s a tape dispenser. Oh, it’s a beautiful tape dispenser, Tommy, is that he is really gorgeous. Right? So this tape dispenser, it’s going to be worth, oh, it’s going to be make millions. I’m going to sell millions of them. Everybody needs one. They’re going to keep them in their cars on their bicycles. So people say, yeah, we need tape. Everybody needs to tape. And you needed to Spencer. But so when I’m creating this, the best advice then in that scenario, if I’m going to use that exit velocity, is to get this selling on Amazon. Get through there. I mean, let’s face it, they’re the marketplace right now. And so you get all that before going out and doing my website and expecting to get the results. Is that accurate, Mr Seo expert?

Tommy:                               00:18:26               Is that exactly. Yeah. And actually, um, we actually didn’t, didn’t, didn’t cha chat about this, but yeah, I um, I had an Amazon business as well with tape dispensers. Dispensers. Yeah. It was, it was dispensed to damaged nails. Um, but we, we, yeah, we did the same thing actually. Um, it was, it was a second business. That business is, is working. He’s actually focusing on it full time now and I, and I’m, I’m working, I’m working on my own stuff, but yeah we did the same thing. I’m after work would work on the business, started with a small amount of inventory, got it on the Amazon, figured out problems, figured out the review stuff, but absolutely got the business to a level where we went through, you know you can, it’s more manageable to deal with the two months shipping delay from the Chinese factory and it’s more manageable when they Amazon seller support are a bunch of jerks to you and don’t answer your questions and Bayzos doesn’t call you back or you can, it’s easier to handle when you have that full time job and you can sort of, you sort of have a little bit more time.

Tommy:                               00:19:25               So 100% agree. If you’re trying to do this, you need to order your, your first 10 or hundred or or however many units as possible and get the listings up and get going as quickly as possible.

Stephen:                             00:19:37               Cool. Now let’s take say Steve’s tape dispensers doing well on Amazon. It’s, it’s a beautiful tape dispenser. And so now he wants to pull it off and go to put out Steve’s tape.com. I mean that’s a place people are definitely gonna find, right? If I just put up a website that’s a steep tape.com I’m going to have the same velocity I have on Amazon. Correct? You Now? Definitely. I don’t think so. So, so let’s take it that way though, because you’re an SEO expert and I was thinking about that, you know, is that, um, using your strategy of getting the exit velocity. So, um, a third party seller, I’m selling part time, I’m building my velocity of keeping my job, building, building, building, building, building up good products. Hopefully getting my shipments from China, getting my products, get the reviews, get it going. Now I want to move off of there to reduce my costs, to reduce the control, to reduce the competition. Right? Can we take that same, can we take that same exit velocity from Amazon over to Steve’s tape.com? You know, bad example.

Tommy:                               00:20:39               Yeah, it’s, it’s, I, I think you’re saying it’s interesting. Um, I think platform I, I was sort of view platform risk in a different category. I under you, this is a massive concern and I really do know what you’re talking about. Building the brand outside of their ecosystem and not being so reliant on it is a huge thing. And you actually do this in any type of digital marketing. Being too reliant on just SEO is a problem. Being too reliant on just organic Facebook cause the problem being too reliant on just Instagram as a problem. Right? So hedging and making sure you have other channels when things go awry is, is a, is a massive deal. Um, would I baby step in from Amazon to my own brand? You know, I’m not really sure. Um, I’d have to think about it a little bit more, but I, but you do need to diversify and what, what you’re alluding to now, which is the, the inevitable domination of Amazon and Amazon basics and all these other monopolistic type things.

Tommy:                               00:21:35               It’s coming for sure. So I don’t, I don’t know if I would approach it the same way of like exit philosophy from Amazon to, to the next phase. But I absolutely would diversify. I absolutely would not be relying on one channel because, uh, there’s no doubt it’ll, it’ll disappear eventually. Yeah. They use that phrase omni-channel. Right. That’s why we actually even call our three legged stool. We have three revenue, um, legs in our business and we actually call it omnichannel sales. I’m selling on all the platforms we can. Um, however, you know, to be real, majority of our sales are on Amazon majority. Yeah. Right. You know, and just a lot of businesses. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t have today. That’s the marketplace today. Now who knows what it’ll be in the future. Does that mean that, excuse me, does that mean that all that SEO stuff, cause I was thinking about like paypal when you were doing SEO for paypal.

Tommy:                               00:22:25               They were pretty much, I don’t want to say they were the only player, but they were the winner for sure. Um, I know there were other ecommerce, uh, payment platforms, but I could name them, I mean maybe a few, but back then they were the dominant one. Are they to dump? Oh, I guess there’s still the dominant one. But just knowing where we are at today, could they be the dominant one again in the current Seo Environment? So, um, yeah, so enterprise SEO is a really different animal than, uh, than what a lot of people think. And I know paypal was, it was really interesting to go over all to everyone. Me, because in general, people hate paypal and nobody likes you and nobody likes them. And that in general, people love Airbnb. So making this switch was, um, was, was really interesting. Paypal is much more like a bank and the enterprise SEO is incredibly boring for it.

Tommy:                               00:23:25               Right? So it was, it was just the amount of regulations or what was it because of a bureaucracy? It really just big company stuff. And I would even say enterprise SEO as boring, agnostic of the company. So it’s things like, you know, the product manager or designer wants to push out a change and that’s going to accidentally drop traffic 30% and you need to put a presentation on why they shouldn’t do that. Right. Or, or, or do you have to spin it in a positive way? Hey Steve, your fees are only going up 3% this month, not 14. Woo. Right, right. That would be probably the copywriter and UX designers a role there. But yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying. Yeah. Or going to have stuff like penetrating new markets, right? Like, okay, well, you know, are we ranking for um, you know, payment processing in Spanish in Peru, right.

Tommy:                               00:24:14               So we were going for a lot of, um, and that I was working on a lot of internationalization and um, you know, both both buyer and seller side queries and non English languages. So it just, um, the nature of what I was doing is very, it was very specialist and it was very, it wasn’t at all related to the strategy and market share and things like that. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be a great candidate for knowing what their strategy is. I will say that even though, um, it was a big boring, lethargic company that people are very annoyed with, I was actually crazy impressed that they made that move to acquire a Venmo. And, um, what’s the parent company of Venmo? Um, I dunno. Uh, I like Venmo, my Venmo experiences. Why do I think differently event mode than I do at paypal? The to trusting I, it’s, it, it’s because it’s a cool young startup to focus on the user and, and, and have all the technical debt. Right. That’s exactly why that, that’s why big companies byes bye bye. Smaller ones is that it’s too hard to turn the big ship around and they just buy them instead. And I mean that’s not that way. That’s Facebook buying whatsapp. That’s Facebook buying Instagram, um, Amazon buying Zappos. Yeah. That, that’s a good example.

Stephen:                             00:25:25               Yeah. And they left them alone. I mean there’s still out in the left. Yup. Yup. So when you were working for paypal, that was still owned by Ebay and so was paypal, is it the same model? Like ebay because it’s funny, I use Ebay and to get a chain, I mean, it’s like, you know, they have, I forget how many thousands of employees were like Poshmark. We sell on and they got like, you know, 30 or 40 people, you know, and it’s just so much easier to list on Poshmark than it is on Ebay because it’s a giant machine. So the same thing with paypal versus like a Venmo.

Tommy:                               00:25:56               Yeah. This is Ebay. Such a sad story like breaks my heart. Yeah. It’s a love. Hate him, Eh, it’s, uh, it’s just the big company stuff. I mean, it’s, and I actually think it’s less than to do with, it’s less to do with these individual companies and just the nature of how a big monolithic human organization works. I mean, it’s, it’s hard to turn these things around. Um, and they end up not, they end up kind of dying, you know? So do you run, run your

Stephen:                             00:26:31               business different? I mean, is that, are these the, you know, and thinking about that, right? You’ve been in those big environments. I’ve been in the corporate environment, I think of all the, Oh God, I hate some of those things that we did. Um, there are no way. There’s no way I would allow it to go on. I always say it here. I don’t want to work for that company. You know, Zoe, it’s just me and my son most of the time and I’m always like, I don’t wanna work for that company, so let’s go do this, you know. How about you? I mean, is that, those are those absolutes that you don’t bring forward, like no chance.

Tommy:                               00:26:57               Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s not even on the close to the same, the same scale but, but yeah, the small companies, uh, with the ability to maneuver or work on what they want to work on worker, my link keep costs really, really low and don’t have a obligations of the shareholders are, are in a really advantageous position to absolutely kill it with their products and with customer service and things like that. I, I think there is going to be a breaking down neval Ramakant I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him. He’s incredible yet like angel investor and just sort of pontificator he just, his tweets are amazing, but he, his, the way he views the Internet is pretty simple. He says there’s kind of, every vertical will end up being the future of the Internet is going to be one monolithic company per vertical and then thousands or millions of small ones, right?

Tommy:                               00:27:54               So, um, there’s going to be one search engine and that’s certain is a bad example. It’s going to be one ecommerce player and that’s Amazon. And then there’s going to be millions of smaller direct to consumer brands, right. Um, like, and so, and he has all these examples of uh, different, different sort of online verticals where this is happening and this sort of one monolithic player and then lots of small ones and all of the medium ones or the mediocre big companies are all going to die. That’s sort of the way he, he used it. And I think it’s, I think it’s interesting. I think it’s a, it’s a real possibility.

Stephen:                             00:28:32               Sure. So then what’s your advice for like, think of our business, right? So we’re all small sellers, right? Most of my listeners are going to be small sellers selling half a million bucks to a couple million dollars. I’m making maybe a 20% margin, you know, so they’re not killing it, but they’re building, you know, they’re building something, right? They, like you say, if you’re selling half a million and you can, if you get to 20%, uh, and I would argue, I find it hard to believe that you are, if you really got all the costs built in of warehousing and insurance and legal and all the rest, second nonsense, like we, yeah. Um, you, you’re making a what we used to make it at six figures at a job. I can go to corporate America and make that, you know, cell phones, cell phones. I always say that yet. And t you can go make 60, 70 grand someone’s cell phones. Um, when, when you look at these smaller businesses, as they’re growing, they all, we all want to grow. We think that growing is the answer. Getting bigger. Getting that, what you just said though is those middle sized companies are probably going to be in trouble and not gonna make it or I mean a middle size relative to $1 billion or several billion dollar paypal. Maybe it, maybe I’m, maybe I’m thinking it’s too small still.

Tommy:                               00:29:43               Yeah. I think the nature of what you’re talking about, it’s still at least what neval Ravi kind of saying is that yeah, there’s no, these small ecommerce sellers in the half million to maybe even up to 10 million would still be sort of in a small world hit. His argument is that Amazon will kill Ebay, walmart.com. Right. Like, um, those kinds of guys and then the direct to consumer, basically the sweet spot is the product needs to much attention and is too cool to make into an Amazon basics. Right. So let me get, I love that.

Stephen:                             00:30:15               So too cool. Eh, and a too complicated to make an Amazon basics.

Tommy:                               00:30:19               Yeah. Two, yeah. Two months. Two to a small and cool. And too much creativity kind of is required, um, to, to, to run it, to manufacture it. And so if it can’t be sort of a white label Amazon basics thing then then you’re okay.

Stephen:                             00:30:37               Right. Is that, is that uh, because I don’t want to miss this because a whole bunch of people are gonna listen to that over again or is that also the way you look at it as the size of the market share? Meaning that if they even got 100% of the market share, you still only going to sell, you know, uh, I gotta be careful what I say cause I know a lot of people’s products, I can be really careful when I say a tape dispenser. Yeah. Tape dispensers. But I mean, yeah, there are only going to sell a thousand tape dispenser or a 10,000 tape dispensers. Amazon’s not going to waste their time getting into the basics of making them, cause it’s just not worth it. It’s not big enough of is that, is that a metric that we should be looking at?

Tommy:                               00:31:13               Yeah. I mean, so like again, the caveat here, the caveat here is that I have no idea what I’m talking about. So I like I have, well, that’s kind of important, right? That’s kind of important. I, but no, no, I’m not, you know, I haven’t worked for Amazon. I don’t, I have no idea what their decision calculus would be. Um, and again, I would recommend your listeners go to Nepal. Ravi [inaudible] actually just did a podcast episode with Joe Rogan is incredible. Um, highly recommend you check it out and just, it just, his philosophy on the Internet, um, is a piece of what he talks about. But the, in my opinion, having built an Amazon Fba business and having worked in Silicon Valley and, and having looked at how Internet companies grow, Yeah. If you look at the trajectory of Amazon Basic Skews, right? The total number of things that they’re looking at, it’s increasing rapidly. And I think that’s terrifying for Amazon sellers in general. But if things are, um, if they’re not, if you have a unique product, right, that’s, that’s created, that requires creativity and it’s cool and small, it’s just going to be fundamentally, it’s sort of has to be at the bottom of the list for Amazon, right to go after, I think. I think for, as an easy way to think about it, I think stuff on Etsy is probably safe, safer, right. Then the stuff on Amazon.

Stephen:                             00:32:30               Okay. So, so Steve’s VCR, right? Probably not a good idea. Bad example, Steve, your DVD player, right? Maybe there’s still some on DVD players. That’s not probably because that would be something that would be, might be worth going after. However, uh, you know, he’d, like you say, my rainbow colored tape dispenser might, might be a good example. Okay. All right. I get it now. Alright. I get it.

Tommy:                               00:32:54               And yeah, and that’s just the nature. That’s just the nature of how the economy works, right? I mean, we, we have industrialization, we pro, we, we create processes for things and we standardize things and, and we pumped them out. Right? Like, you know, that was the, the factories of the industrial revolution did that even even, and, and it’s the uniqueness that that sort of pulls people in, right? Hotels have been commoditized, but now airbnb has, has cool, unique products. Even News, I mean, you go to Google News and you type in a new story and there’s 3000 other articles all on the same news. Like the actual news is, I don’t want to get too political here, but the news is such a commodity now that the only people trying to differentiate or the people on the thing, the craziest stuff on the craziest sides of both ends of the spectrum, right? So everything that becomes a commodity and I think, um, the weird, unique products are, are going to be the only way to do this for the next 10, 20 years going forward.

Stephen:                             00:33:51               Be Weird and be unique. I love it. You gotta write that one down. Be Unique. Um, it’s true. You know, it’s funny, we used to think that, uh, competitors from overseas, I’m gonna wanna, you know, geographically placed them, uh, wouldn’t get into some of these businesses and they are right. They have definitely niche down into some of these niches. And I’m like, you go to Alibaba for example, and it’s shocking some of the stuff that they’re making. I’m like, are you kidding me? They’re now selling that too. Um, and I think, like you say, it’s not unique. It’s just, it’s become a commodity and the price is down in the price, never has recovered on us. So many things that we’ve done.

Tommy:                               00:34:30               Hmm. And that’s, that’s the future set the future. I mean, it seems like getting man, and I was a betting man. That’s, that’s a, that’s what I would, that’s what I would bet on for sure. Yeah.

Stephen:                             00:34:42               It’s interesting to me too, is that you are in the information business, right? I mean, your courses and products that you sell on click mine. And so your website is click [inaudible] dot com and, uh, most of it’s digital, um, to do marketing, a paid advertising content marketing. You’re not in the physical business as much. Why, why, why not? I mean, I guess it’s a, is it what we just talked about that you saw that coming and yet wasn’t your love or what is that?

Tommy:                               00:35:09               Yeah, I mean it’s just sort of a different, a different angle, right? Yeah, we do digital marketing training for entrepreneurs and marketers and I’ve done both. I’ve done physical products and both information product. Um, yeah, it’s a, it’s sort of a more related to me personally and my lifestyle. I am, I love to teach. I’ve been teaching for a long time and we do a lot of sort of media stuff, right? Um, growing channel, we do a lot of webinars, we create a lot of content. And so, um, all of our team is all remote as well. And so we’re just sort of better suited to be a digital, um, uh, uh, an information product type of business. So it’s just kind of more, more related to sort of, uh, my lifestyle and what I prefer to work on. One, and I mentioned this in the preinterview and I think you glanced on it.

Tommy:                               00:36:01               You talk about one night, one day idea seizures, has this forced you to stop doing the one day idea of seizures? Because I’m guilty of that. But then I guarantee you a whole half of people listening are going to sit back and say, oh, is that what that’s tech? Is that the technical scientific a term that I’m right. You know, I’m having the seizures and one day idea and I get them all the, I buy it, I’m a domain buyer then. So literally I’ll have that idea and I’d be like, Oh, I’ve got to buy the domain, got to do this just in case. And then next day it’s gone. And I’m like, Oh, why did I buy that exactly the way, the way to see if the way to diagnose this problem is to check your domain hosting account. And if you have a large number of domains that are sitting there unused and you didn’t think about them much more after the moment you bought them, you have the one day idea seizure problem diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic.

Tommy:                               00:36:50               You have the problem. Yeah. So, um, that was, that was, it’s really interesting. Double edged sword because I think I would not have stumbled onto my business, which is currently working if I hadn’t had all these domain. Oh, interesting. These ideas seizures. Right. So the way I sort of went about it, like I kind of think about it like you’re in a room, you’re blindfolded and you’re just punching at the air trying to find a door or a wall or something like that. And I did a lot of like punching and not finding it right. And every one of those domains and those ideas, it was like a punch. Right. Um, and so, but yeah, on the other side I stopped doing that and once I stopped doing that, um, that’s when my business started to pick up. How so I think the one big thing for me is, and this is going to be a tougher pill to swallow, was especially for people in the physical product space, going over weight.

Tommy:                               00:37:49               You just diagnosed me, you gave me, you say you got to know Steve, here’s your illness and now you’re going to say I’m going to make it even worse. Yeah, I’m going to make it much worse. So my, I found, okay, I’ll give you an example. One of the ideas I had, um, you know, a couple of years in Seo, I just started working at paypal and I created an APP developer lead generation website, right? So, you know, there are a ton of people. The iPhone was growing in market share. This was 2011 and there were a ton of people searching for iPhone APP developers. And I ended up creating this iPhone app developer lead generation side. I started getting it ranking for, you know, iPhone app developer quotes and iPhone APP developer companies. And it was ranking and I was generating leads and I just hated like I hated the business, right?

Tommy:                               00:38:37               I wasn’t interested in apps. I wasn’t interested in Ios in um, an APP development, Ios APP development. And every morning, you know, I was working full time for this company. Every Saturday morning when I went to go work on it more like I just couldn’t get out of bed. I wasn’t motivated at all. Um, and so when you’re first getting started on this stuff and a lot of people undervalue this, your own, you are the engine of Your Business, right? Your interest in your motivation and your time is like a car engine. And so your personal interest in this business is the single most important factor you can have. And so w two it’s success or to getting to getting started, right? Like I view, I view it like a little, you know, single engine propeller airplane on a, on a runway, trying to get, trying to get up off the ground.

Tommy:                               00:39:32               And if you’re not personally interested in this, you’re gonna die. And in this kind of relates to what we were talking about before, which is these small unique, cool products that Amazon basics isn’t going to go after. This stuff that’s boring and that you’re not motivated by is probably going to be commoditized by the monsters, right? So I think the biggest advantage you can have is having a personal interest in the product you’re working on are in the service you’re working. I know that’s really hard, especially for ecommerce sellers because there’s probably a ton of very boring product opportunities that you might not personally be interested in. But for me, I had a bunch of ideas, seizures, they were all in stuff I didn’t care about. I wasn’t motivated by, and it was just like idea after idea after idea. And then the one I was actually interested in, which is search engine optimization, learning digital marketing, teaching digital marketing, um, it was sort of the right place right time and everything just sort of took off. But it was because every morning I was down to wake up on Saturday morning at five in the morning and, and go start working on my business because it was super exciting and it got me out of bed.

Stephen:                             00:40:35               Well, I think there’s a lesson there, what you’re describing and you, you said it sort of is that you wouldn’t be in this successful place that you are, had you not had that illness. Steve. Um, but the key is, is that you are acting on it. You were taking action at something and you figured out, nope, don’t like this, don’t like this, don’t like this. And you had the maturity to walk away from them. To me, that’s, that’s a, that’s a high, it’s a high lesson to learn. Um, but it sounds like it worked out and then you started seeing this common thing, hey, I like doing this for this company. I like doing this magically do the same and therefore you figured it out. So. Hmm. Very, very cool

Tommy:                               00:41:12               saying. Yeah. I’ve never, I’ve never reflected on it like that, but, but maybe you’re right. Yeah.

Stephen:                             00:41:16               Well you said it. I mean, I’m just repeating what you said. I’m not putting, somebody said, I put some words in somebody’s mouth. I’m not putting words in your mouth. You actually said it. How many of you said you wouldn’t be as successful had you not had that disease? You, you wouldn’t have found this, I guess is the right way to say it. Right? You, you weren’t experienced with it. Um, what, you know, I’m thinking about lifestyle now. So you’ve designed this lifestyle, clearly wouldn’t be living in Hawaii or do, you wouldn’t have come from Bali to Hawaii. I mean, let’s face it, you know, like you said, it’s Bali on a 10 x or whatever your phrase was. I mean, it’s really improved Bali with the Safeway. The Safeway. Yeah. Right. So you can go actually go get food, real food. Um, so this lifestyle, you’ve designed that intentional. How long did it take you to get comfortable? And now I heard you say the thousand hour, that’s three years to get to a level of success just to replace your income. That’s long enough. But how about to get to a place now where you can up your costs, moving from Bali to Hawaii, he’s definitely a little bit higher. How do you get to that comfort level? How long did it take?

Tommy:                               00:42:16               Yeah, I mean, I know everyone’s looking for the overnight success, but it took seven years. Seven years. Wow. Seven years. Seven it overnight. Success of seven years. So I’ve been an overnight success. Yeah. And I think, I think the, there’s a myth out there around, uh, around the overnight success. I mean, every, you, you hear this all the time and it’s just never true. Like people talk, people talk about airbnb that way. They say airbnb is the overnight success. And they were a similar boat where they, you know, their first, their founders, we’re all living on credit cards for the first couple of years. None of them had quit their jobs. They were all working on other things. Um, you know, every investor they talked to said, I hope you’re working on another idea. And it took them three or four years before they really started to take off.

Tommy:                               00:43:13               And then even now, you know, they’re still growing and growing and growing going. But, um, but the, the, the story gets convoluted into saying, oh, it’s just all they did was launched the website and it blew up the next day. And just, it just never goes away. Of course, my business is a much, much, much smaller scale a of that. But, um, but yeah, it just people, it’s also in this, this, this culture we live in of everyone’s always killing it, right? You go on social media and everyone’s always killing it. At Lambeau. Do you have a lambo? Everybody’s got Lamba we actually did an email marketing campaign, um, uh, around, you know, how we were launching the new phase of our products and, and the subject line was, sorry, there are no Lambros here. Um, but everyone is life sculpting. Everyone is putting their best face forward, fake faking their photos and adding filters, their photos and lying about their business numbers. And um, the reality is it’s a, it’s a grind and it takes a long time. And so I think that’s another reason to um, be genuinely interested in what you’re working on. Because I got bad news for you. You’re probably going to have to buckle up for a pretty long ride because it just takes time.

Stephen:                             00:44:28               You know, one of the other things that I wanted to make sure we got time to talk about is when changes are made outside of your control. One of the, the limits that we have is that most of us who sell mostly on Amazon, you know, again, he’s not calling and asking for advice. So there’s huge changes made that affect our business every day. I mean, it, it every month, let me say it that way. There are big changes and it you the, or adapt or you die, right? You experienced that same thing when you were working for these large companies. How do you handle that now in your, your own company because you’re getting to some size and you’ve got other people that you have to rely on, which is always a challenge. How do you, how do you handle those things now in this size business that you have now?

Tommy:                               00:45:07               Yeah, and I think that is an advantage of the smaller, um, of the smaller players actually, right? Being too reliant on these large channels is, is a huge problem. Yes. So we talked about the diversification of channels earlier, which is a, is a really good idea, but there’s a ton of examples out there of, of people dying. You look at demand media, right? You’ll ever publicly traded company, 100% reliant on Google. And you can see in their stock price, look at the entire history of demand media stock price. You can see the day they were hit by a Google Algorithm update and there they were too big to turn it around. Zynga is another good one. They had a bunch of uh, you know, Farmville and all these social games and you can see in their stock price the day that Facebook changed their, the newsfeed algorithm, you can see it, right? I think it’s actually much easier to, to gain exposure to multiple channels as a smaller company. And if you, if you rely on just one channel and you grow a ton, you have a way bigger risk of having your legs cut out. Excuse me, having your legs cut out from underneath you. Um, and so yeah, I think moving, moving more of your efforts into lots of channels. I liked your idea of a, what’d you call it? A three legged stool? Yeah,

Stephen:                             00:46:20               three legged revenue. I got that from Dan Miller from Dave Ramsey fame. And you talking about that multiple, you know, multiple streams of income, but a three legged stool. I mean, it just, you can’t have your business won’t operate with, to write a single legged, you’ve gotta be a pretty good balancer, but with three you can get some stability.

Tommy:                               00:46:37               Yeah. And so, and we, we talk a lot about this purely from a traffic and sales perspective on digital, digital marketing only, right? So some portion of traffic and sales coming from Seo, Facebook ads, right? Um, your email list in ecommerce would have other things too, like Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, things like that. But, but yeah, hedging, hedging for the day when, when things inevitably start to get start to get choppy a, is it really good idea, obviously.

Stephen:                             00:47:04               Well, you just said something now that I, I mean, we’re almost at a close, I want to make sure we add value. What you just said makes perfect sense to me. So as an SEO expert, you’re recommend, what you just said to me is your recommendation, right? Is to make sure that you have traffic coming from all those different places. Is that correct? That’s correct. Yeah. And, and I, I, how do you do that? I’m a, I’m a two or three person operation. You know, Tommy, I mean it’s, it’s a of work.

Tommy:                               00:47:30               It is a lot of work yet we, um, I mean I, you know, I was an SEO specialist for really long time. That was sort of the one thing I did, but the last two years that we sort of pivoted the business our business to not only of course teaching more people, teaching people about other different types of channels, right. We teach Seo, we teach paid advertising, content marketing, social media, but we also do everything that we eat as well. Right. Which otherwise you’re not going to grow. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, pretty deep, but it wasn’t a thing. There’s one, um, one, one interesting hack or like kind of add value to your users that I think is worth thinking about. Platforms change all the time. Right? Um, Google is looking very entrenched right now, but you know, I, you could make the argument over the last year that Facebook is getting wobbly.

Tommy:                               00:48:18               You know, no one remembers my space. Um, you know, certain certain platforms have, have risen and fallen it just in the last year to like, like vine, right? Or how long, how long will Pinterest lasts, right? So, um, these algorithms can, E-bay, UBIT is a great example of the ecommerce player, number one in the late nineties. Right? And now, you know, it’s like, it’s the garage sale, um, the little engine that could but could be doing way better too, right? So, um, these things change all the time, but there is an exception. There’s an evergreen exception in my opinion, and it’s email. Um, and the reason why is because it’s a difference between protocols and applications, right? So Facebook is a web application. Google is a web application. Instagram as a web application, email is a protocol. It’s the SMTP protocol. It’s a way by which we communicate with each other.

Tommy:                               00:49:08               And so there’s actually less platform risk on your email list, right? So, um, you know, Google’s algorithm can change and you can lose rankings. Amazon’s algorithm can change and you can lose rankings. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm can change and you can lose visibility. But your email lists doesn’t really go away. And unless people start fundamentally changing how they communicated with the protocol that they communicate by, which is the SMTP protocol, it’s not going to go away, right? You can, when you build your email list, that’s a portable assets that goes with you. No matter what happens, your business, no matter what third party players do, no one really can take your email list away. And it’s just this really underrated channel like until until we stop using email, it’s going to be a valuable asset that’s a little bit more sort of secure. It’s kind of the bunker and the storm for a lot of different things.

Tommy:                               00:49:57               So there’s always going to be platforms falling and rising and jumping on them as they rise has a really good idea. Um, and trying to jump off them before they fall is also a really good idea. But one sort of way to just avoid that whole decision is to, to, to build and grow and nurture your email list. So just some food for thought. And so, as I said, think about it because you know, hey Tommy, I got to get on Instagram. I got to grow my Instagram followers. I’m not getting enough momentum, so I’m putting all that effort there. Or like you say, Facebook followers got to get my group up, go back to base. I mean, Zach, back to basics, back to is, is that because everybody else is doing what I just said? I mean, is that like, yeah, yeah. I mean, um, you know, don’t get me wrong.

Tommy:                               00:50:38               Growing an email list that people love and that you’re providing value to all, all the time is not easy. Um, you still need to have your customer avatar figured out and have your voice figure it out and figure out how to provide value all the time. But yeah, a lot of people don’t understand that. Um, email is a protocol that is now ingrained in how we use the Internet and it’s, uh, it’s probably the best, um, Internet marketing protocol that you can use as a, as a channel. And it just isn’t reliant on public companies, terms of service and whatever the political is of the day and all these other things. So it just hasn’t died yet. It hasn’t gone away. And um, we’ve seen a massive, massive value out of focusing on our, on our email list and there’s a number of companies that derive a ton of their revenue from their email list.

Tommy:                               00:51:30               So it’s just a, it’s just a good thing to be working on for that day when the storm inevitably hit. Okay. I think it’s solid advice and I take, people are going to be sit back and say, Huh, okay, so Steve’s got this little brand, I got my stuff tape dispenser. It’s beautiful by the way. And so I’ve now got customers buying my products. So you’re saying Steve developed that email list, get that entrenched dying customer list, own it really market to it and then you, you have rights to it. Correct. Is that, that’s correct. Is that almost, is that almost the exit velocity? I mean it’s sitting there thinking about that. Is that a year if you’re going to put your effort, is that, it sounds like that’s what I should be doing. So I think there’s, especially if you’re an ecommerce seller and you’re new, I think the, the way, I don’t necessarily think building an email list is the right way to start.

Tommy:                               00:52:22               I think the email list is a good way to hedge against future uncertainty of platform risk, right? Um, the best way to start is to relentlessly find sales anywhere you can be as desperate as humanly possible. So whatever it takes, whatever platform because you just don’t know what’s going to work. But the email list is a really good sort of bellwether for like, um, you know, if we lose everything tomorrow on x platform, what would we do next? Can we cross sell, upsell and cross promote people on our current email lists? How would we do that? So I’m not necessarily convinced it’s the best way to start, but it is a really good way to hedge against future platform risks. And is there a magic math formula that we could do to sit back and say, all right, I’m doing half a million dollars in sales. And so if I have, you know, 10,000, I guess, I mean, I guess the answer’s going to be, of course not. There’s no math, um, 10,000 and Ebay or email followers, excuse me. Um, oh, my list at are probably either have inquired about my products have bought my products.

Stephen:                             00:53:26               Uh, I guess there’s a conversion factor. I mean this is Steve doing his own math, right? So you gotta you need to know what your conversion factor is. Okay, nevermind. That was a dumb question. I get it. I was stupid. I was trying to figure out is there a way, cause I’m, I’m back on that exit velocity and I, I honestly think that there’s a whole group only people sitting back saying, man, I’ve got to find another place to sell where I don’t have to worry about losing my ad every single day. Right. I mean, it’s one of the big fears is that a competitor can come on your listing and they mess with your, you know, they just say it was, you know, it wasn’t as described. And they do it a couple of different times and guess what, Amazon’s algorithm rewards them for that black hat tactic, right? It rewards them. And so therefore you’re at that mercy every single day hoping that nobody’s gonna mess with your system. So you’re looking for a B plan. And so, um, I’m trying to figure out, is there a, you know, what’s the safety net, you know, where you are, safety stock leads to call any accounting world you know, for, for protecting yourself. Um, doesn’t sound like there is one.

Tommy:                               00:54:24               Well, so I think the end, the problem email, the email list becomes a problem if you have, I think his email is harder if your products are more basic, more boring and more commoditized and are sort of the, there isn’t a ton. Um, to them. And I’m not, I’m not hating on these at all. Actually. When I first started my Fba business with a friend of mine when we first started and these incredibly boring uninspirational products that, but the people still needed them, right? And um, so they’re like the way we usually recommend to go about email marketing is doing a lot of providing value, doing uh, you know, um, showing different ways to use the product, talking about different stories of users using the product problems that you solve after using the product and sort of like setting up automations that, that, that get users warmed up to this stuff and priding a adding a bunch of value before asking them to convert. This is a little bit harder if you’re selling, um, tape dispensers, right? So it’s not a one size fits all solution. I actually don’t, uh, don’t know if I would recommend building an email list of 50,000 people if you just have one skew and it’s just tape dispensers. I’m not, I’m not actually entirely convinced that that would be the beautiful smooth

Stephen:                             00:55:42               or your, your mini course that you give away. So, you know, let, let’s face it, we’re not pitching your stuff and Steve doesn’t benefit in any way other than somebody using it. And if they benefit, that’s awesome for me. Um, but click mine. Did you have a free email marketing mini course? And so these are the kinds of things that you’re talking about in these things. The, the free portion. I mean, I’m assuming that at some point you’re going to say, hey, it’s Steve, I’ll give you some free him warming you up. Right. Hence the warm up. And then I’m going to pitch you on it more in depth course if you, if you need to get more from it. But these are the kinds of things that you’re talking about in these courses.

Tommy:                               00:56:12               That’s exactly right. Yeah. You actually, you can, you can, if you go check out any of our free mini courses, it’s very Meta because we’re teaching how to do this and then you’ll, you’ll later get the pitch, right? Yeah. So I know, I

Stephen:                             00:56:23               get it. You right. So you come in, we provide a ton of value, we give you a bunch of free stuff. And then we say, Hey, by the way, if you want to enroll in the full thing, here’s, here’s a link to to buy. And all of it’s automated. Um, and, and the basic goal there is, yeah, 98% of everything we do is free. But if you want to learn even more and you want to learn faster than you pay for the full for the full product. Um, but that’s like a little bit different in the info information product world versus a versus physical products, physical products. You can do some similar things. I’m not sure if you’ve played with, I think they call it free plus shipping, right? Or a different kind of offers like that one time offers where it’s like a very low priced product and then sort of the gateway drug into your, your higher value stuff.

Stephen:                             00:57:03               Uh, there’s a, there’s a bunch of stuff you can do there on the email marketing side for sure. So it’s click minded.com and then there’s under courses and products. Um, there’s, I’m going to read them down real quick. And again, I don’t benefit digital marketing, bundle SEO training, paid advertising, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, sales finals, Google analytics in Sop Library. So again, oh the sop sir. So critical, big deal. Um, but again it’s that I agree with you when you warm them up. And so by giving away certain things and helping people, eventually when they’re looking, it’s a relationship. You’re starting the relationship by giving these away. So I, I do appreciate that. So again, that’s click minded.com and so, you know, before I ask my final question, I just want to make sure people understand if they have a followup question. Tommy gave me his email contact.

Stephen:                             00:57:47               It’s Tom yet, click [inaudible] dot com and it’s pretty easy Tommy. I clicked [inaudible] dot com and it’s actually you answering, right? It’s not somebody that’s may not, it’s not a robot, not a robot, not a chat Bot. A with a little head making a million. All right. So the last question I always ask anyone is, cause I always look for people, at least in my world and maybe I’m talking to myself half the time is I get that, you know, my, uh, um, my one day idea seizures, I get stuck. I mean if I add on a, I got a million ideas every single day that I don’t execute or I don’t execute it well, but then I hit the point of getting stuck and getting past that point of stuck for me has been a challenge for many people. It becomes a challenge. What’s your advice, um, especially cause you got this breadth of experience for getting past that stuck point.

Speaker 4:                           00:58:35               Okay.

Stephen:                             00:58:35               Yeah. Do you mean, um, do you mean stuck in traffic? Stuck in sales, stuck in like, um, motivation? Well, it, I mean, aren’t they all the same thing? I mean, isn’t there a common, at least, at least for me, you know, when I look at the recent that I get stuck there, almost all the same reason, you know, um, it’s almost for being so, well, you answered the way you want to answer it. Yeah, that’s a good one. I am the, my, my, one of my buddies that I’m frequently on the phone with talking, talking, talking business with. He makes fun of me cause I just relentless, they say this all the time, but my move, my goto move. You gotta have guns, Tom, you gotta move. Oh man, I gotta move patented, move, patented, pending move. Um, I like to do what I call a violent

Tommy:                               00:59:22               change in direction. And um, the basic idea is like, I don’t know what’s wrong, so I change everything. It’s like the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do with like statistically significant conversion rate optimization testing. I change everything and I mean, I, you know, drive to work a different way. I changed my office around, I wear different clothes. I call people I haven’t called before. I eat different food, I do different workout. Like I change everything about my day and I do that until I break through. And it’s like, it’s like you’re blindfolded and kicking and punching and screaming and you just run in the other direction and things open up. It’s not, sometimes it makes absolutely no sense and that you actually look like a crazy person on the outside. But I just change every single variable in my life. It’s just a violent change in direction cause it’s just the old, and it’s super cliche. I don’t know if it was Einstein, it’s probably attribute it to the wrong people all the time at this point. But it’s just the, what the definition of insanity, right, is doing. It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And it’s super cliche at this point, but the, the, the results way too to embody that quote is to take a violent change in direction, um, until you break through.

Stephen:                             01:00:37               Love it. Oh my God, I got that. I even wrote it down. Tommy’s move. I love it. Love it. Well, that’s a shirt anybody’s going to do merge shirt. This is a good one. Okay. There you go. Well, you know, I really appreciate it because, uh, I think you’ve got great perspective. You walked away from like you say, your dream job, the best opportunity to probably the best opportunity you ever had. Or maybe we’ll have, however it no way does it measure with the life that you’re living now that you are life skill sculpting. Um, but not fake, fake, fake. I love that. I’ve never heard that phrase. A baking. I’m like Ooh, that’s like very, very cool. Um, so again, you can follow up, uh, um, click minded.com, tommy@clickminded.com if you have further question. Man, I thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Wish you nothing but success.

Tommy:                               01:01:25               Yeah, Steven, this was great. Really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Stephen:                             01:01:29               Great Story. Great Guy. Um, create ideas, a lot of good information in there. Go back and listen to it, but remember, are you lifescape sculpting or you fake faking? Ooh, how deep is that? Remember Tommy’s move. Um, I might try Tommy’s move, you know, a bylaw change of direction. So if you see me all of a sudden with a tattoo on my arm and earring, um, my hair slicked back instead of combed. Nice to take. Maybe a beard, maybe I’ll have to do that. I’m, you know, I’m going to have to start. Um, I can go back to a leisure suit or something cool like that, and I would look really cool, violent change in direction. Um, sometimes that might be what’s needed to, to break you free. Uh, if, if you have not been able to break free, try it. What do you got to lose? You can give freedom. That’s awesome. So again, reach out to Tommy, Tommy, click minded. If you’re interested, go check out the free stuff. Definitely worth it. Um, and

Cool voice guy:                  01:02:20               you might find value. E-Commerce woman, I’m dot com ecommerce momentum. Dukkha, take care. Thanks for listening to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found that incomers momentum dotcom under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on iTunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

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