Podcast appearances and mentions of scott voelker

What's the key to growing a YouTube channel fast? For that and more, follow us here andsubscribe to our YouTube channel!In this episode ofBuilt Online, we reconnect with Scott Voelker to discuss his latest YouTube venture. He shares how he built a $100K/year channel in just nine months, revealing key strategies for audience growth, niche focus, and monetization. Scott also breaks down why engagement matters more than views and how simple setups can still drive big results. If you're serious about growing your YouTube channel, you won't want to miss this episode.------------SCOTT VOELKER:- Live Video School YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@livevideoschool- Live Video School Website:https://www.livevideoschool.com/- FREE $100k Roadmap Guide:https://www.livevideoschool.com/100k-business-plan- FREE Title Hooks File:https://www.livevideoschool.com/hooks- Brand Creators YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@brandcreators⁠- Brand Creators Website:https://www.brandcreators.com/- Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/rockyourbrandpodcast⁠------------BUILT ONLINE:- YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk036m54SJk6QNkrBK_Y17ND7OYIoALSx- Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/0OBIOzNIaEvHC4c3iGPrwP- Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/built-online-podcast/id1661426024------------ABOUT EVERBEE:- Website:https://everbee.io/- YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@helloeverbee- Blog:https://everbee.io/etsy-seller-blog/- TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@everbee.io?lang=en- Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/everbee.io/- Facebook Community:https://www.facebook.com/groups/416630082921388

Scott is on a mission to help others build online businesses that provide stability and the freedom to live life on their own terms; without the GET RICH QUICK HYPE. He's a family man first, wanting to teach, inspire and motivate others to build a future proof business that fits their lifestyle.Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. Strategies for building a loyal customer base in e-commerce.The importance of email marketing for brand growth and customer retention.Scott Volker's journey from Amazon selling to expanding into Etsy.The potential of Etsy as a marketplace for sellers.Techniques for capturing customer emails through giveaways and promotions.The role of YouTube in enhancing brand visibility and engagement.The significance of personal engagement with customers to foster loyalty.Tools and platforms for effective email marketing.The impact of building an email list on business valuation and resilience.Insights on overcoming challenges and the importance of perseverance in business.In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Scott Volker, a renowned e-commerce expert from Brand Creators and the Rock Your Brand Podcast. Scott shares his journey from selling on Amazon to expanding into Etsy, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and building a loyal customer base. Key strategies discussed include leveraging email marketing to create a raving fan base and the potential of Etsy as a complementary marketplace. Scott also introduces his new YouTube venture, Live Video School, aimed at helping others master live video content. This episode offers actionable insights for scaling e-commerce businesses to new heights.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:Build and Engage Your Email List: Launch a giveaway featuring a bundle of your top-selling products using tools like King Sumo, and promote it via Facebook Ads. Integrate new email addresses into an autoresponder system, and follow up with announcements and discounts to keep the audience engaged.Leverage YouTube for Brand Growth: Create and upload engaging content on YouTube, such as product tutorials or behind-the-scenes videos. Use YouTube Shorts to capture attention quickly, and include calls-to-action for viewers to join your email list.Utilize Product Inserts for Email Collection: Include product inserts with your Amazon or Etsy orders, inviting customers to join a VIP list for exclusive discounts and giveaways. Regularly update this list with personalized content and promotions.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough PodcastEmail Josh Hadley: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.comJungle ScoutQuiet Light BrokerageKing SumoAutoresponderPrintfulVidIQEtsyEverbeeConvertKitKajabiBeehiivKlaviyoOpus ClipsBrand CreatorsThe Compound Effect by Darren HardyTiny Habits by BJ FoggAtomic Habits by James ClearSteve Chou from My Wife Quit Her JobMichael Jackness from Ecom CrewSpecial Mention(s):Adam “Heist” Runquist on LinkedInKevin King on LinkedInMichael E. Gerber on LinkedInRelated Episode(s):“Cracking the Amazon Code: Learn From Adam Heist's Brand Scaling Secrets” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Kevin King's Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Unlocking Entrepreneurial Greatness | Insider Secrets With E-myth Author Michael Gerber” on the eComm Breakthrough PodcastEpisode SponsorThis episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures. I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.If you've hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that's Ecomm with two M's) to learn more.Transcript AreaJosh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I'm your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top busine...

Today, I’m thrilled to have my long time friend Scottie V back on the show.  Scott Voelker is known in many circles as the grandfather of Amazon as he was one of the first and most popular podcasts in the space. But in this episode, we’re going to talk about Etsy and how he and his wife have grown a thriving Etsy business selling print on demand products.  Enjoy! What You’ll Learn Tips on how to sell on Etsy How Scott in his wife started their business on Etsy How to grow your sales and how to advertise on the […] The post 524: Insider Tips On How To Sell Profitably On Etsy With Scott Voelker appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

Today, I have my good friend Chris Shaffer on the show.   Chris works with Scott Voelker over at Brand Creators, and he consults with dozens of e-commerce companies and owns a bunch of his own as well. Chris always brings a unique perspective on what’s working in e-commerce, and he’s the type of guy who always gets his hands dirty.  In this episode, we discuss what’s working and how to maximize your marketing budget. What You’ll Learn A better way to grow your sales outside of driving more traffic The number one mistake that most ecommerce business owners make How […] The post 507: Budget-Friendly Ecommerce Tips That Will Double Your Sales With Chris Shaffer appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

On this podcast episode, host Cody McGuffie talks with full-time online entrepreneur Scott Voelker. Scott has been selling online for over 10 years and has built multiple million dollar brands. He has recently been focusing his experience on his wife's shop, which has made over $40,000 in revenue in the first two months. The podcast also covers topics such as the numbers of success on Amazon vs. Etsy and the tools to use to grow your Etsy business fast.The Etsy Seller Podcast is hosted by Cody McGuffie, CEO and founder of EverBee. In each weekly episode of this podcast, you'll hear from experienced Etsy Sellers on how they run their Etsy business, how they got their first sales on Etsy, how they marketing their Etsy shops and so much more. EverBee is a Etsy product analytics tool that helps Etsy sellers find best selling products and keywords so they can sell more on Etsy.  It helps Etsy sellers speed up product research and product discovery so they can get their first Etsy sales and grow their business. Sign up for EverBee for free at the link - https://everbee.ioKey points and timestamps:00:03:43 Start a business with passion.00:05:11 Start with what you know.00:13:11 Pick a niche and serve.00:15:02 Build a niche brand for customers.00:23:54 Validate demand before moving forward.00:28:27 Keep learning and growing.00:28:41 Take action and refine.00:33:30 Drive SEO with Everbee.ioFurther episode details:Start small and grow bigStarting out small and growing big is a concept that has been around for centuries. It is a philosophy that is often applied to business, but it can also be applied to life in general. Scott Volker is a prime example of someone who has taken this approach and has been able to build multiple million-dollar brands. Scott started his journey in the online selling world by teaching people how to sell on Amazon FBA. He took a step-by-step approach and was able to build a successful business. He eventually sold all of his businesses, but his success was a testament to the power of starting small and growing big. Scott and his wife then moved on to their Etsy shop, Sashi Shop. When they first started the shop, they were able to generate $40,000 in revenue in two months. This is a prime example of how starting small can lead to big success. The key to success is to start small and focus on the details. Focus on what works and keep improving it. Don't try to do too much at once and don't be afraid to fail. Learn from your mistakes and keep going. Scott's success story is a great example of how starting small and growing big can be a successful strategy. He started out with a small business, but was able to grow it into multiple million-dollar brands. He was able to take a step-by-step approach and focus on the details of what works. He was also willing to take risks and learn from his mistakes. Starting out small and growing big is a great way to achieve success. It takes patience and dedication, but it can lead to big rewards. If you focus on the details, take risks, and learn from your mistakes, you can achieve success. So take Scott's advice and start small and grow big!Start small, think bigScott is a great example of someone who started small and ended up with a successful business. He started out as a photographer and then moved into marketing. After that, he started learning editing and eventually started an online business. He taught people what he had learned in photography and how to use Photoshop. That business was successful and eventually turned into a six-figure business.From there, Scott started to hear about private labeling and launched his first product. That product went on to do over a million dollars in sales. Scott then sold his e-commerce business and took a break to focus on his podcast. His wife then started to dabble in Etsy and Scott jumped in to help her out.Scott's story proves that you don't need to have a huge business to make it big. He started out small and took risks to get to where he is today. He learned from his mistakes and used his knowledge to grow his business. That's the key to success. Start small, think big.Scott's advice is great for anyone looking to start a business. You don't need to start with a huge business plan. You can start small and grow it into something bigger. Take small steps, use your knowledge, and be willing to take risks. That's the key to success. Start small, think big.## Pick a niche and serve.When it comes to starting a business, the most important thing to do is to pick a niche and serve it. This means finding a specific market or group of people and focusing on providing them with a product or service that meets their needs. It's important to narrow down your focus and become an expert in that area. This will help you stand out from the competition and make it easier to market your business.When selecting a niche, it's important to consider the market size, competition, and potential for growth. You want to make sure that the market is large enough to sustain your business and that there is enough competition to keep you motivated. It's also important to consider the potential for growth. You don't want to get stuck in a stagnant market that won't support your business.Once you've chosen a niche, it's important to focus on serving it. This means providing quality products and services to your customers. You want to make sure that they are satisfied with what you provide. It's also important to stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in your niche. This will help you stay ahead of the competition and give you an edge in the market.In conclusion, picking a niche and serving it is the key to success in any business. It's important to select a niche that is large enough to sustain your business and that has enough potential for growth. Once you've chosen a niche, focus on serving it by providing quality products and services to your customers. Stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in your niche and you'll be well on your way to success.Build relationships with customersBuilding relationships with customers is also an important part of running a successful business. It's essential to establish trust with customers and to provide them with a great customer experience. You can do this by offering quality products and services, providing excellent customer service, and engaging with customers on social media. Additionally, you can collect customer email addresses and use them to send out notifications about new products and services. Doing this will help you to build relationships with customers and create loyalty.Validate demand before proceedingHowever, before you can start engaging with customers and building relationships, you must first validate the demand for your products and services. If there is no demand for what you are offering, then it is unlikely that you will be able to build up a customer base and make a profit. To validate demand, you can use tools such as keyword research, market research, and competitor research. Keyword research will help you to identify what people are searching for online, and market research will help you to understand the needs of your target market. Additionally, competitor research will help you to identify what your competitors are doing and how you can do it better.Once you have validated the demand for your products and services, you can then start to build relationships with customers. You can do this by creating content that is tailored to their needs, engaging with them on social media, and offering discounts and promotions. Additionally, you can use customer email addresses to send notifications about new products and services. Doing all of these things will help you to build relationships with customers and create loyalty.Overall, it is essential to validate the demand for your products and services before proceeding. Doing this will help you to ensure that you are offering something that people actually want and need, and it will help you to create a successful business. After you have validated the demand, you can then start to build relationships with customers and create loyalty.Keep learning, give firstOne of the best ways to do this is to be curious and keep learning. Scott, a successful ecommerce entrepreneur, recommends that instead of spending money on a Frappuccino, you should invest it into Etsy ads. This will help you to get more visibility and reach more potential customers. Additionally, he suggests that you should be doing basic SEO, such as titling your images properly, to make sure that your products are easy to find. Scott also recommends that you create multiple products to leverage and put them on more than one product. This will give you more real estate on Etsy and more lines in the water, so to speak. The more products you have, the more chances you have of making sales. Finally, Scott suggests that you give first before expecting anything in return. This means that you should be providing value to your customers before asking them to invest in you or your products. In doing this, you will create relationships and loyalty with your customers, which will lead to more sales in the long run.  All in all, the key to success in ecommerce is to keep learning and give first. Validate the demand for your products and services, invest in ads, do basic SEO, create multiple products, and give first. Doing these things will help you to create a successful business.Take action to gain resultsScott Fox, an ecommerce expert, recently discussed the importance of taking action to gain results on a podcast. He believes that learning is important, but it is the action that will bring results. Fox encourages people to take action and adjust as they go. He also recommends reading the book The Compound Effect, which is about taking small steps that will eventually lead to big results.Fox also encourages people to invest in Etsy ads and use the data to refine and tweak their strategies. He believes that the data will help you to learn more about what works and what doesn't. He also recommends reading his book, The Take Action Effect, which is about his journey from making seven dollars an hour to becoming a seven-figure earner.It is clear that taking action is the key to success. Learning is important, but it is the action that will bring results. Investing in ads, using data to refine strategies, and giving first will help you to create a successful business. Taking small steps and making adjustments as you go will help you to achieve your goals. So, take action today and start creating the business of your dreams!Drive Etsy SEO with Everbee.ioOne way to start taking action is to use Everbee.io to drive SEO and get those sales. Everbee shows you the key search volume that helps you understand what people are actually typing in that search bar. With this data, you can better understand what people are searching for and what they are actually buying. This tool is essential for growing your Etsy business.  Everbee.io provides a number of features that can help you to drive SEO and get those sales. For example, it can help you to identify and target the right keywords to use in your SEO strategy. This can help you to optimize your website and make it easier for people to find your products. Everbee.io also helps you to track and analyze your website's performance. You can use this data to identify areas of improvement and adjust your strategy accordingly. In addition to helping you drive SEO, Everbee.io also helps you to optimize your listings. It can help you to create more effective titles and descriptions for your products, which can help you to increase your visibility in search engine results. Everbee.io also helps you to identify the best images to use for your listings, which can help to attract more customers. Overall, Everbee.io is an invaluable tool for driving SEO and getting those sales. It can help you to identify the right keywords and optimize your listings for better visibility. It can also help you to track and analyze your website's performance and identify areas of improvement. So, take action today and start using Everbee.io to drive SEO and get those sales!

From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2019. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL's in these archive episodes are still relevant. Scott Voelker is the host of The Amazing Seller Podcast, a top rated business podcast where he helps everyday people build successful, Lifestyle Online Businesses through his TAKE ACTION approach. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. Think about something you've done that you have succeeded at, and feel great about that. 2. Start believing in yourself and give yourself credit. 3. You don't have to be an expert. Find your niche, and if it's not clear, learn the process. Take action. Check out the website to grab a copy of Scott's book, The Take Action Effect! - TakeActionEffect.com Sponsors: Speakeasy: An app that allows you to organize your own live talk show! Visit GetSpeakEasy.com to download the app and start interacting with your audience LIVE! HubSpot: Building a business is challenging enough; your tech stack shouldn't make it harder! Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at Hubspot.com.

From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2019. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL's in these archive episodes are still relevant. Scott Voelker is the host of The Amazing Seller Podcast, a top rated business podcast where he helps everyday people build successful, Lifestyle Online Businesses through his TAKE ACTION approach. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. Think about something you've done that you have succeeded at, and feel great about that. 2. Start believing in yourself and give yourself credit. 3. You don't have to be an expert. Find your niche, and if it's not clear, learn the process. Take action. Check out the website to grab a copy of Scott's book, The Take Action Effect! - TakeActionEffect.com Sponsors: Speakeasy: An app that allows you to organize your own live talk show! Visit GetSpeakEasy.com to download the app and start interacting with your audience LIVE! HubSpot: Building a business is challenging enough; your tech stack shouldn't make it harder! Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at Hubspot.com.

Scott Voelker has been in the online business game for almost 12 years and has built multiple 7-figure brands! In today's episode you're going to learn: How to diversify your traffic and income How to grow your audience and your email list How you can future-proof your business by focusing on the skills you build along the way! If you need help starting, building, and growing an online business, check out all of the support and resources for entrepreneurs at https://www.ShaneSams.com and https://www.FlippedLifestyle.com!  Follow Shane on twitter @shane_sams.

Sagi Shrieber on The Commit First Podcast Presents:How to Take Action on Your Dreams (w/ Scott Voelker)SUBSCRIBE HERE:http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=sagishrieberYou can also find the show in audio, on your favorite podcasting app:- Spotify: http://sagishrieber.com/spotify​​- on iTunes: http://sagishrieber.com/itunes​​- Stitcher: http://sagishrieber.com/stitcher​​Check out the Commit First Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/commit.first​​If you want to stay up to date with my posts and values, follow my Instagram account too: https://www.instagram.com/commit.first​​/sagishrieber------------------------********Episode 98 - How to Take Action on Your Dreams (w/ Scott Voelker) *******The 100th episode is on the horizon, and to celebrate it, we'll be featuring 3 iconic episodes from the show's past releases! A second re-release down, here's episode no. 59 with Scott Voelker. "I am all about taking the risk."We all carry a certain vision in our minds that we want to turn into reality. This vision is often fueled by passion, and we could have had this passion for most of our lives. Perhaps it's a passion you found early on in your younger days, or perhaps it's something new that you've just found love for. Regardless of whether it's old or new, dreams are the vision people have for themselves, a goal that they want to work towards for the rest of their lives. It's a great thing to have the perfect visualization of yourself in your mind, and to know where you want to be. But do you know how to get yourself from here to there? A dream- as powerful of a fuse it is in igniting the explosion we call success- is just like potential energy. Sure, it's got the kick to take you places, but it won't go anywhere without the right starter. It won't take you anywhere if you don't take action. How do you take action, exactly?Taking action on your dreams is like making a leap of faith into the uncertainty that the future holds. Comfort zones are often within your space, and you need to get out of THAT space. You have to get to where you want to go, and where you want to go isn't where you are right now. As you watch this episode, you'll realize that taking action is taking risks. When you want to act on your dreams, you'll eventually have to make a gamble and expose yourself to a little risk, with the better chance of growth.On this release, we'll be recalling the topics I covered with Scott Voelker about how we can take the right set of actions and turn our dreams into reality. Tune in as we cover a portion of his book, the "Take Action Effect," which talks about the elaborate plan he devised to help himself and other entrepreneurs find success. Scott emphasizes the importance of mindset and how taking out "Mental trash"- which hinders you from finally working on your goals- is very important. Have you stopped making excuses, and finally started working on goals that you only used to talk about WANTING to work on?Now a father of 3 kids and a loving husband to his wife for the past 25 years and counting, Scott Voelker decided one day that he didn't want to keep swinging hammers for the rest of his life. Right after graduating high school, Scott was pushed into the life of a construction worker. He changed his mind somewhere down the line, and finally decided to take the reins. He steered himself towards the direction of success, building his own company known as "The Brand Creators." With The Brand Creators, Scott has helped thousands of people unlock their true potential by helping then TAKE ACTION. With his guidance, many entrepreneurs have found success he calls their "ultimate freedom business." Scott has proven to be a great brand builder through his work, developing the skills of his clients to turn them into confident, resilient, and future proof entrepreneurs. ********Topics discussed on the show:********IntroductionKnowing Your NumbersMaking That LeapTaking Action = Taking RiskThe Take Action EffectChanging Plans for OpportunitiesRecognizing Your AchievementsGetting Through Mental TrashHow to Create a Future Proof YouThe Shiny Object SyndromeThe PlanPutting It Out ThereAttracting the Right PeopleFind Your "Why"Niche Down"Take Action" Moments********Links Mentioned:********Rock Your Brand: ttps://www.brandcreators.com/category/podcast/Brand Accelerator Live: https://learn.brandcreators.com/brand-accelerator-liveThe Take Action Effect - Scott Voelker: https://www.amazon.com/Take-Action-Effect-Future-Proof-Business-ebook/dp/B07WSYBN2T********Where to find Scott:********His Website: https://www.brandcreators.com/His Email: scott@theamazingseller.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottvoelker/ (@scottvoelker)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-voelker-8b604325/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scott.voelker.9********

Playing SideHustle Live with Scott Voelker from Brand Creators. Scott helps everyday people start and grow their own online, future proof brand that creates freedom in their life. Over the years he's helped thousands of people TAKE ACTION to UNLOCK their true potential on building their ultimate freedom business, by developing the skills to make them resilient, confident and FUTURE PROOF. He's clocked my 10,000 hours over the years working in the trenches and helping others build and grow their brands. He knows the power in TAKING ACTION better than anyone and I've seen people's lives changed as a result of it. Including his OWN! He believes in it so much that he wrote a book titled “The Take Action Effect” which helps to unlock the true potential in anyone who adopts these simple, but powerful methods. He's been through some hard stuff growing up and was never handed anything in life. But, that also allows him to understand what prevents people from going after their goals due to the lack of confidence and feeling STUCK! It's now Scott's MISSION to help others unlock their true potential and TAKE ACTION towards creating their own Ultimate Freedom Business and LIFE they deserve. Website: www.brandcreators.com Insta: https://www.instagram.com/scottvoelker Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rockyourbrandpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottvoelker Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCufEXE2Ir9IBgTIPGcJdtCA ~

"Apples to Apples meets Shark Tank" in SideHustle, the party game for entrepreneurs. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the team behind the game is looking for ways to raise awareness and stand out on the crowded Amazon marketplace. In this coaching episode, you'll meet co-founders Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran, who (along with a 3rd co-founder, Tim Palladino) are looking for some ways to expand on the initial traction and grow a brand in the "productive play" space. To help out with this one, I enlisted Side Hustle Show alumni and e-commerce and branding pro, Scott Voelker.  Full show notes

On this episode of Wizards of Ecom, you’ll hear from Scott as he talks about his book Take Action Effect, why he wrote and published the book and his goals in writing it. Take Action Effect is a book about breaking through your limitations and finding freedom from the rat race but how can this book help you grow your brand. Find out why Scott wrote this book instead of something of his expertise. This and so much more to learn from Scott Voelker. In This Episode: [00:36] Introducing the Godfather of Private label, author of Take Action Effect, Scott Voelker. [03:10] Why Scott wrote Take Action Effect and not about Private Label. [08:40] His love for building brands. [14:00] Advice to ecom businesses who find Amazon selling hard and expensive. [17:59] Scott talk about selling stuff before they arrive. [19:00] Did Scott have a timeline for the book? [22:06] Scott talks about getting help on writing his book from a website called Scribe. [22:35] Took him 10 months to do the book. [25:56] Scott about working best under deadline. [27:25] Scott gave 7/10 to describe the impact of the book to his life. [28:45] Quoting a line from the book about having no time to start a business. [32:19] Scott talking about email list. [36:40] Creating content. [38:08] What is Scott's main goal in writing his book? [40:10] Scott speaks about building a connection with his readers/listeners. [44:20] How much of an investment is the audio book? [48:20] How podcast book goes [50:45] Is there another book? [52:35] What Take Action effect is about and why you should read it? Guest Links and References: WEBSITE: https://www.takeactioneffect.com/the-book https://brandcreators.com/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/scottvoelker/?hl=en PODCAST: The Amazing Seller Book References: The Compound Effect By: Darren hardy Tiny Habits By: BJ Fogg Links and Resources: Wizards of Amazon: https://www.wizardsofamazon.com/ Wizards of Amazon Courses: https://amazonwizard.teachable.com/p/amazon-wizard Wizards of Amazon Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/South-Florida-FBA/ Text “Amazon” to 69922 Wizards of Amazon on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WizardsofAmazon/ Wizards of Amazon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wizardsofamazon/ Wizards of Amazon on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wizardsofamazon

Scott Voelker may be a new grandparent but has the energy of a teenager. This year marks his 19th year being self-employed, and although he is slowing down to focus more on family, his workload at Brand Creators is still more than most will tackle in a lifetime.  Running the Rock Your Brand Podcast is his primary focus with nearly 900 episodes and 16 million podcast downloads, but that's just the start.  Last year Scott checked a few things off his to-do list: Wrote the book Take Action Effect. Ran a high-level mastermind (10 people at $25,000 to join). Completed a $200k home renovation for an Airbnb rental. Managed his podcast 175k-350k monthly downloads. Created online courses for Brand Creators. Hosted a live event with over 250 people in attendance. (pre-Covid) Completed a handful of exciting case studies.  Sold a business which all together netted just at 7 figures.  Listen in to hear what Scott has learned and where he will be focusing his time in the future.

Scott Voelker of Brand Creators On Membership Branding + Future-Proofing Your Online Business! On this week’s episode of the Membership Masters Podcast I welcome Scott Voelker of the Rock Your Brand Podcast. Scott has been in the membership game for almost 12 years and has built multiple 7-figure brands! Today Scott shares a ton of wisdom on branding and subscription memberships with you. Everything from Costco-style membership sites to selling physical products on Amazon. And, all the information about his new membership site over at brandcreators.com.   In today’s episode you’re going to learn: 1. How to diversify your traffic strategies to grow your audience and your email list. 2. Why building congruency in your membership is key to long-term retention. And, 3. How you can future-proof your business by focusing on the skills you build along the way!

Selling physical products is a great way to grow a business and a brand.  Sometimes in the online world, there can be a feeling that there are two types of businesses - ones that sell physical products and ones that sell digital products. The truth is you can do both, and adding physical products can be a great way to support (and fund) the growth of your eCommerce business. That is why I am excited to welcome my good buddy Scott Voelker to talk about adding physical products. Connect With Scott Voelker Brand Accelerator Live Brand Creators   Connect With Kevin Sanderson Facebook Group   Check Out This Exclusive Training You can also learn from experts to help you maximize your holiday sales at the upcoming Q4 Domination Summit, October 6-8, 2020.  Sign up for your free ticket for the dates of the event: Q4Domination.com Subscribe to Maximizing Ecommerce on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM

Good morning everyone! Today is Wednesday, the 2nd of September, and today we have an interview with Scott Voelker. Scott Voelker graduated high school and worked for his father’s construction company for a while. Once his thoughts of owning the business someday were shut down, he and his wife started a photography business, which they knew nothing about. They wanted to create their own schedule. He learned a lot of business by running a brick and mortar. Then he dove into the online space.  Success for Scott is being able to create your own lifestyle, your own day-to-day. It’s not about having a nine-figure business because of all the heaviness that comes with that. Give it a listen, Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2VkXGHq Listen on Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/39TYebQ Motivated Entrepreneurs Website: https://motivatedentrepreneurs.co.uk/ Please Like, Share and Subscribe to Motivated Entrepreneurs Youtube Channel: https://bit.ly/3eA64u5 Rock Your Brand Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/rock-your-brand-podcast/id963294070 Brand Creators: https://brandcreators.com/   Have a great day, Dean

Good morning everyone! Thank you for tuning in. Today is  Friday, the 19th of June.   Once a week, I am going to review a book. This week’s book is The Take Action Effect by Scott Voelker.   What is your "Why?" We need a solid foundation and that is our mindset. There is no point moving forward if you don’t have a solid foundation. So ask yourself "Why" 7 times to know your why. Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/39S8fGh Listen on Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/39TYebQ Brand Creators - https://brandcreators.com/   Enjoy, Dean

Picture this… You’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean... The waves are crashing in every direction you look… You start to panic…  Fearing how the waves might overcome you… But then you slow down and realize that there’s a perfect circle of water around you… Unaffected by the waves and the chaos.  You’re sitting in complete peace. You don’t wonder for long why this is… You just go with it! And despite the unknown and uncertainty… You are moving, thriving, and truly living! You can have this kind of hope and peace. Your business and your life can thrive and grow in this season.  There is no better time than now to show up, serve the people around you, and create the life and business you’ve always wanted.  You can have this. You can do this.   In this week’s episode of the Epic Success Podcast, I talk with Rachel Perry, Jennifer Berson, and Scott Voelker. We deep dive into the power of showing up big and serving people even bigger!  These 7 figure entrepreneurs deep dive into everything they are doing since the start of the pandemic. They share their top ways that they are showing up, sharing, and serving their people.  You’re not going to want to miss this incredible episode of the Epic Success Podcast. So grab a pen and paper and start taking notes! The biggest take-aways from today’s episode are:   You can have the know-how to deal with your anxieties so that you can show up and serve the right way in your business. -Rachel Perry   Anxieties are a reality of life, with or without the current pandemic. You have permission to feel whatever you are feeling. You are okay and it will be okay! And you don’t have to stay there.. You can learn how to deal with those feelings so you can have the freedom to run your business and your life the way you want!  [2:06]   This is possible. You can have a thriving business right now! -Jennifer Berson   You can have hope in the middle of any situation. There is opportunity everywhere you look. Now more than ever is the time to show up, share, and serve. You have the power to change the way you think and be the creator of your thoughts, creating the life you really want. [11:40]   Just because the idea is already out there doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. -Scott Voelker   It’s important to have someone that you look up to that inspires you. You are that person to someone. People will resonate and like you because of who you are and how you show up and serve. It doesn’t matter if someone out there is doing what you want to do, you will reach a whole group of people that they haven’t been able to reach because of who you are. So just believe in yourself and go for it! [33:40]  Everything around us has settled into a new normal. The shifting economy might feel different,  but you have the power to show up, share, and serve your people.  Your tribe is looking to you for hope and encouragement! So don’t be afraid to speak what is on your heart and give the very best version of yourself to your people.  I know you have this in you… To show up and to serve your tribe in a big, big way! And I can’t wait to see how you’ll do it! Tell me: What are you going to do this week to show up and serve your people? I’d love to know! Tell me by sending me a message on Facebook or a DM on Instagram. I can’t wait to hear from you! My good friend James Wedmore has his step-by-step plan for attracting your First 100 Leads! This plan will help you make your first sale and be the foundation for all the sales that follow.  This 14-Video Mini-Course: Your First 100 Leads, is usually $197… And he's offering this course to you for absolutely free!  Inside this training, you’ll discover why “traditional list-building” strategies don’t work, and just leave you spending months creating a bunch of free content no one ever sees, or worse, attracts leads that never invest with YOU. This is the way to get your business off the ground fast!  Click the link below and get access to this Free Mini-Course! Register for the free First 100 Leads Mini-Course:  >>> https://drshannonirvine.com/100leads Today I want to give a shoutout to one of my Epic Success Podcast listeners who left a 5-star review titled “Epically Successful”: “Dr. Shannon is clear, direct and entertaining. Love the insights she shares!!!”   I absolutely love sharing the brain-based process of creating success in your life & business with you each week on the Epic Success podcast! Reviews are how I know you’re finding value and help me share Epic Success with more people! If you have something you want to say about the Epic Success podcast, I’d love it if you’d post a 5-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Episode 20This FiringTheMan podcast is a book review of “The Take Action Effect” by Scott Voelker. David and Ken discuss the lessons learned from this book and how we have implemented some of these lessons into our own business. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Scott Voelker – he is the host of “Rock Your Brand Podcast" (formerly: The Amazing Seller Podcast) and stands out from other influencers in his space due to his commitment to push forward, even when times get tough. This book highlights many of Scott’s successes but also his failures. Buy now on Amazon: “The Take Action Effect” by Scott Voelker – ORDER HERE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.FiringTheMan.comFacebookYouTubeInstagram Email us --> support@firingtheman.com

During this pandemic, I’ve had a lot more time to listen to podcasts. It’s a great way to fill the time while giving your eyes a break from screens. I certainly don’t have a corner on the market and there are people out there who you can learn a lot about marketing from. These are probably podcasts you haven’t heard of, but they will help your business incredibly. Here they are:   1. The Copywriter Club Podcast by Kira Hug and Rob Marsh 2. The Amazing Seller Podcast by Scott Voelker 3. Podcast Strategies for Growing Your Business by Danny Ozment 4. The Business Event Playbook by Lauren Davis 5. Brand on Brands on Brands with Brandon Birkmeyer 6. Pricing is Positioning with Paul Klein 7. The Marketing Your Movement Show with Duane Zingale 8. The Gayla Scrivener Show 9. Creative Chats with Mike Brennan 10. Live Life Rich with Marissa Nehlsen Honorable mention: Fundraising Freedom Podcast with Mary Valloni   Make sure to check out of each of these podcasts by clicking the links above. You won’t regret gaining all the knowledge they have to give on entrepreneurship, live events, money mindset, building funnels, and even podcasting itself.   Resources: Brand You Bootcamp   Connect with Mike: https://mikekim.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mikekimtv/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekimtv Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mikekimtv/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/mikekimtv   *** EPISODE CREDITS: If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com 

Things have been turned upside down lately.  A lot of us suddenly a lot of extra time on our hands.   Do you also have a dream job/career/business that you have been thinking of getting into? Not sure if you should take that next step? Now maybe the time to take the leap and start taking action!  If you do, chances are you are going to need an understanding of how marketing can work for your company/project as well.  Scott is in the middle of rebranding.  But you can find some of his stuff at:  brandcreators.com Get more from Jesse and Chase The Craft: www.chasethecraft.com Support The Podcast: www.chasethecraft.com/support  

Scott Voelker is the founder and host of The Amazing Seller, a top-ranked podcast that helps everyday people start and grow online e-commerce businesses. I met Scott about a year ago at the Puerto Rico masterminds and we talked for hours about life and business. He’s in a different internet marketing space than I am, but what he talked about piqued my interest. I’ve thought about diversifying my income streams in the past, and now more than ever us entrepreneurs need to be considering these things. So, in this episode, Scott explains how to diversify and future proof our businesses. He talks about:   1. The cornerstone that is your email list 2. Evergreen assets and the importance of getting traffic 3. Monetizing our chosen database 4. Starting other brands to diversify your revenue 5. The difference between personal brands and e-commerce 6. How uncomfortable moments show us who we really are and what we really want   Resources: The Amazing Seller podcast The Take Action Effect: Proven Steps to Build a Future-Proof Business & Create Your Ultimate Freedom   Connect with Mike: https://mikekim.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mikekimtv/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekimtv Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mikekimtv/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/mikekimtv   *** EPISODE CREDITS: If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com 

Scott Voelker produces an Amazon FBA Podcast — and for many of you, that statement was total jibberish. That’s because Scott has discovered that driving deep into a niche topic enables him to attract a very niche and passionate audience. So, just so you have some context… The FBA part of what I said stands for “Fulfilled by Amazon,” it’s a way of selling products you create or source and have Amazon ship them, handle customer service, handle the processing - everything. It’s an AMAZING possibility for those who want to build their own product-based business. But it’s NOT easy, as Scott explains. You’ll hear his story, learn about how he learned online marketing and creative digital product creation, retail arbitrage, Amazon FBA, and serving others to help them succeed. You’ll benefit from listening to this episode if you... Are willing to take action to move forward… no matter where you’re starting from [0:52]  Love stories of people who’ve paid their dues to reach success [4:36] Wonder if you can succeed without a college degree [10:48] Are in a situation that feels hopeless or “dead end” [15:35] Have always wanted to start and run your own business [17:30] Are curious about selling Private Label products [30:40] Want to learn how to make your own luck and build an audience [37:10] Would like to know the benefits of creating your own  podcast [41:20] Are interested in discovering what you have to offer an audience [43:20] GET NOTIFICATIONS OF NEW EPISODES OF... Podcastification (this show) Scott’s podcast: The Amazing Seller 5 Minute Pitch (Scott’s podcast partnership project) CONNECT WITH: Carey and the Podcast Fast Track Team: https://PodcastFastTrack.com  Scott: https://TheAmazingSeller.com  Read the FULL show notes, including resources mentioned on this episode at https://PodcastFastTrack.com/133 Music used in this episode: "Shaving Mirror" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ "Rock Your World" from https://Audionautix.com (Jason Shaw)

Today’s guest is a husband, father, and successful ecommerce brand owner. And he’s also the mastermind behind planning the extraordinary event where I was a keynote speaker last year, Brand Accelerator Live! I’m so excited to share with you my interview with Kevin Sanderson from Maximizing Ecommerce! Kevin is a full-time ecommerce seller who also helps others grow their businesses. He is the host of the Maximizing Ecommerce podcast and YouTube channel, as well as the event planner behind Brand Accelerator Live, our good friend, Scott Voelker’s conference with 200 attendees. We cover so much in this episode about Kevin’s journey -- from growing his ecommerce business on the side of his day job to going out on his own full-time, and we also dive deep into how he and Scott created Scott’s first ever large-scale live event. And at the end of the interview, I reveal some exciting news coming later this year! In this episode, you’ll learn: How Kevin leveraged his corporate career experience when he made the transition to working for himself How he pitched Brand Accelerator Live to Scott -- and made it happen! How Kevin keeps shiny object syndrome at bay You can find all of the links and resources that I mention in today’s episode at MonicaLouie.com/45.

What is one of the surest paths to substantial wealth? Grow and sell a business. Today's episode is all about Joe's book project, "The Exitpreneurs Playbook." Joe has over 8000 stories to tell about what it's like to buy, what it is like to sell, and ways to outsmart the typical entrepreneur process. Mark is interviewing Joe about this upcoming project, his motivations behind creating it, and how getting to the writing process carried its share of challenges. Joe believes that an exitpreneur should have the tools in hand to start, run, and grow their business for better decision making later on. He is not telling anyone to sell, he is offering them the strategies they need in order to be ready if they do. Episode Highlights: Joe's idea and the process of putting it into book format. Why he wanted to write the book. Reasons exit planning can be challenging for the business owner. The differences between an entrepreneur who is considering a sale versus one who has actually prepared an exit. How businesses often outgrow the founder and smart moves to make before that happens. The importance of reverse engineering to the goal for a better exit strategy. The difference between the entrepreneur and an exitpreneur. How Joe came up with the book title. Transcription: Mark: So Joe I was at an event recently in Salt Lake City and it was in just general kind of a conference meeting room for about 50 people or so and they had a lot of books in this place. And I was intrigued to just kind of look around and see what was there and you'll never guess what book was up on the shelf. Actually, do you want to guess? Joe: Yeah I want to guess. I'm looking around my office, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss? Mark: You know what? It actually was in there. Joe: It was in there. Mark: Not the one I'm referring to. Joe: The ONE Thing by John Keller? Now, wait let's call out one of our friends; Superfans by Pat Flynn? Mark: You know I don't know. There were a lot of entrepreneurial focused books so maybe that one was there; I don't know. Joe: Okay. Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel? Mark: Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel; yeah absolutely, that was on the shelf. In fact, they had multiple copies of it. They were giving that book away. And today; what is it? It's February 11th so we're a little bit past a year since Walker launched that book and it spent a year as number one on Amazon Bestseller in this category which is pretty fantastic. I mean obviously, we're super happy for Walker. He won an award for being the thought leader of the year through a major alliance of mergers and acquisition advisors. Joe: Huge. Mark: That is huge. He's had professors from Ivy League colleges come up and talk to him about the book. All of this leads me to something beyond just the accolades and that is the information that's out there in this space about what it's like to sell, what it's like to buy. Walker is talking on specifically which is the buy-side and how to use this as an investment vehicle, how to outsmart the Startup Game as he says and reduce some of that risk. But there's also a whole on the sell-side as well where people don't really know that their business is sellable or they don't think about it. But just yesterday I was reading something on the fastest way to build wealth; what is the fastest way to build wealth? And the conclusion that they had is the fastest way to build wealth is through building a business and selling it. This is one of the quickest ways to actually building wealth. And I know you've had guests on the podcast here who have talked about this process or you call it your Incredible Exits series. I'm really, really excited that you're writing a book on this and you're not calling it Incredible Exits despite everybody else's opinions that you should but it's these stories behind the scenes. Joe: Yeah I'm excited to be writing it finally. I sat down with some friends a year ago probably around a fire pit; maybe a year and a half ago because it was summertime. We're recording this in February of 2020 and I said look I'm making an announcement, I'm writing a book, I'm telling you guys to call me out on it and then I didn't do anything but I tried. I tried to write it. I tried to outline chapters. I tried to follow up… Mark: Hold on one second. You made this promise right on a fire pit with friends? Joe: Yes. Mark: How much did you consume before you made this promise? Joe: I'm a 2-drink maximum kind of guy, that's just the way I am. Mark: Okay. Joe: It's like giving myself an injection of the flu when I have more so it wasn't much. But I didn't get it done. It's a lot of work. So I followed the original book in a box method and didn't get it done at the scheduled time. I was at Brand Accelerator Live with our friend Scott Voelker last September and one of big Scott's announcements was that he actually wrote a book. And it is also here on my desk somewhere; where is it Scott? It's the Take Action Effect. I just turned my head away from the microphone, sorry folks. And I met his scribe; a young lady by the name of Brennan and I connected with her during the event and talked with her and said okay this is it I'm done. I'm hiring a scribe and I'm going to write the book. And I've talked to a number of people about it and let me just cover the process and then answer the question as to why the heck I'm doing this because it's a massive undertaking. The process is instead of actually writing a book myself with written words and a keyboard I get interviewed for I think it was 8 2-hour sessions; so 16 hours in interviews. First, we outlined the chapters and go through the whole process and instead of talking about; I mean writing an article or a chapter on seller's discretionary earnings and add-backs and the three levels of add-backs and all the different things that we talk about on a regular basis Brennan interviewed me. She transcribes the entire interview through UberConference and Rev.com for those that really want great transcription services. And now we're in the sort of lull between all of those interviews and me getting my first draft. They're going to give it to me in thirds. So the first one I will get will probably be I want to say mid to late March and then they'll drip it out in thirds every week for 3 weeks. They want to overwhelm me in terms of reviewing and editing. I still have a lot of technical stuff to add to it but it's really kicked the process into high gear. It's not cheap, let me tell you that. It's an expensive undertaking but I think given what we do for a living and how many people we're trying to help I think it's well worth it. Why am I writing a book? Walker's been an inspiration, very successful with Buy Then Build and the amount of people that he's been able to reach and help on the buy-side. We work with sell-side brokers or sell-side clients for the most part and I've done the math Mark, does it sound inconceivable that I've talked to 8,000 entrepreneurs over the last 8 years? Mark: Not at all. Joe: Yeah and that's probably a conservative number. I'm not saying I've had an in-depth evaluation with 8,000 of them but I have without a doubt talked to 8,000 and that does not count standing in front of a room with 3, 4, 500 people. And the challenge has been we've got to reach them one by one and I know that Walker's book has been as you said best seller. I think it's probably sold over 10,000 copies at this point. Mark: It's over 15 at least. Joe: 15,000 copies? Mark: Yeah, I actually talked to Walker about it a while ago. Joe: I think he told me something like 99% of books sells less than a hundred copies that are published. Now Walker, correct me if I'm wrong but it's pretty impressive. So to get what we share on those valuation calls into somebodies hands before, during, and after they have a valuation call and when they're in an audience that will give them every possible detail that we've developed over the last 8 plus years of doing what we do and sharing that in writing so that they can essentially change their mindset. And that's the goal of the book, it's to change their mindset from reaching out to us when they're sick and tired of running their business or they've had a bump where things get tougher and they say Gosh how can I sell this business? A buddy of mine told me I can get X multiple. I'm going to call Mark and say Mark how much can I sell my business for? I want to change people's mindsets. Instead of saying how much can I sell my business or more often they say how much is my business worth, I want them to say I want to build wealth like you said at the beginning and I want to sell my business for X dollars. I want to do that in 4 years. In order to do that, they need to understand where they are today. And the book is going to help them reverse engineer the path from where they are today to that exit so that they can do a partial valuation, get comfortable with brokers, and drive that path. I had a conversation with Mike Jackness recently and Mike talked about the fact that about what we do sometimes entrepreneurs just don't want to hear it because the idea of exit planning is so beyond what they're trying to do when they're just trying to keep the wheels on the bus, right? They're running out of inventory, they've got competitors coming at them from every angle, they're trying to do cash flow planning and it's just so hard that they can't see out the front window. The objective of the book is to sort of clear that window, have a clear path to an exit that they understand and it's a much better ride. I've been through it myself personally. You did it for me back in 2010. I could see nothing, understood nothing, we had a call, we had several calls and the light bulbs went off and I knew exactly the path to take and I'll tell you what operating my business became a lot more fun and exciting even though I was sick and tired of it after 5 years. Mark: You know the more I experience the business and grow as an entrepreneur the more I'm learning. With anything dealing with a goal really the best way to achieve these things is what you've said, reverse engineer it. Rather than just kind of impulsively decide that I'm going to do something figure out where you want to be and then reverse engineer. But in order to reverse engineer it, you need to understand the mechanisms that are going on to create that value. You're trying with this book to create a shift in the mindset of entrepreneurs, right? By the way, folks if you haven't figured this out we don't have a guest; Joe is the guest. I'm going to interview Joe about the book and maybe we'll talk a little bit about what it is like to do what Joe and I've been doing and everyone else at Quiet Light. Joe: Right, we're co-guests. We're co-hosts and co-guests today because I want to grill you too. Mark: Very good. Alright, I want to start out by saying okay let's talk about your experience. You've been doing this for 8 years. You've done literally tens of millions of dollars of transactions on your own within Quiet Light Brokerage. Joe: I'm fastly closing in on 100 million. Mark: That's right you are. You are; absolutely. Joe: Inaudible[0:11:17.8] 12 to 18 months; pretty shocking. That's amazing. Mark: Absolutely amazing. Talk to me about the mindset that you often see or most naturally see in an entrepreneur that comes to us to sell versus those rare cases of somebody who has planned to sell and what is the difference in the actual process value and stress levels I would say for everyone involved. Joe: Yeah. Look all the success stories that you guys hear about on the Incredible Exits for the most part those are people that had the mindset that they wanted to determine and plan out their exit. They got an education, they figured out what their exit goal was and they called Mark, myself, Jason, Amanda, Chuck, anyone of us and reverse engineer the path to that. They didn't call and say what's your fee, okay I want to list. It was this how does this whole thing work and then we worked with them over a 6, 12, or 18 month period sometimes even more. Those are the success stories that you're hearing about. The people you're not hearing about never sell their business because they call. They might have a call like this or I was just at eCommerceFuel last week as an event and kudos to Andrew Youderian and all the guests and all the people that are there; brilliant, so many smart folks. But even with that high level of entrepreneurial success and drive I still get e-mails like I've gotten this week which is a great chat last week, great presentation. I did a presentation with Mike about the sales of ColorIt. You've really inspired me to sort of try this path to an exit. And then I said okay well this is what I need. Yeah, I don't know I'm so busy with adding SKUs and I'm not really there yet. I'm not ready to sell yet. I'm not ready to think about selling yet. Whereas the yet it should be now regardless of where you are in the business. These people are already doing; the 2 that I'm thinking about where I got the e-mails like the one I don't know his growth. Well, I could do the math on his growth but the discretionary stands out that he's close to 600,000 in discretionary earnings and it is 5 to 6 times more than he ever made in his prior day job. And so he's trying to work towards an exit and retirement. The other was doing nearly 10 million in revenue and had a 25% decline. He's young, he's under 30 years old. And neither of these guys are really ready to exit. Of course, they're not ready to exit but I want them to set a financial goal. I don't care if it's 3 to 5 years from now. Set that goal. I need to exit for X in order to exit. And then figure out where they are, get the education, and work towards that. In 5 years if they're not ready to sell then move the goal post, move it 6 years down the road or 7 years down the road. That is as you said at the beginning the surest way to real financial wealth. But we're not talking about them yet because they're pausing, they're hesitating, they're not going to do it. Those are the stories that I talk about a little bit in the book. There's somebody that was my first million-dollar listing back in the day at Quiet Light. I remember it well. I'm not going to name names. We'll call him Big Mike. That's not his name but we'll call him Big Mike. He had no financials; none whatsoever. And I remember sitting over Christmas break taking all of his bank statements and I actually created the profit and loss statement myself. That is a no-no. We do not do that anymore. No. But I did it. I got it all detailed and accurate and listed the business for 1.1 million. I got an offer for 800 from the gentleman that you sold his business once upon a time. It was actually a good offer because the revenue trends were in decline. And Big Mike said to me well why would I accept it all I have to do is XYZ over the next 12 months and I'll make a quarter of a million dollars and then we can sell the business for 1.2, 1.3 million. And I had a great deal of experience in paid advertising at the time as you know because I just sold my business. This was probably 2012 or early '13. And so we walked through all the possibilities, what to do and how to do it and off he went. The problem was that Big Mike's heart was not in it anymore. He had run up all of his personal debt and personal expenses; his overhead was very high. He lived the life of a very, very successful entrepreneur and his business was no longer trending that way so money was getting tight. He didn't have the ability to pull money from the business and put it into the ad spend that he needed to to reverse it. And so every year for the following 3 years I got any mail from Big Mike that said something along the lines of hey my revenue and profit is at XYZ, can we sell the business for this? And each year it went from that offer from Tony of 800 to the value really was in about 600 the next year. And then the next year he sent me an e-mail it was really based upon what he had given me, about 500. The last time he sent me an e-mail it was about 400. Every single time I replied with based upon what you've given me which is just an email with numbers and I'd say your business value was probably X. Please run a profit and loss statement out of Quickbooks or Xero and export it to Excel with a monthly view. Silence, nothing for 12 more months because he didn't take the necessary steps to do what you have to do in protecting your most valuable asset, in his case his business. And so he's probably got a job, unfortunately. And that's the path unfortunately too many people go down or they learn from the mistakes and they hang up their hat on this particular business. They can't sell it and they move on to another one and hopefully learn from that mistake but it's a painful one. I just want to see people learn from that and therefore the painful process of writing a book. Mark: You know it's great to focus on the success stories. We like success stories. I like talking about success stories that make me happy. But for all these success stories that you have shared so far through the podcast that you'll be sharing through this book we also have the stories like that. And I could probably rattle off a number as well. Maybe I'll start a new podcast or write a book called Unincredible Exits or Nasty Exits or something like that. It will be real depressing and no one will ever want to read it. But you're absolutely right in; that example is really good. That example shows what we see so often from entrepreneurs where they're running; they're used to the hustle, they're used to the grind, they're used to being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to be able to correct something but sometimes when a business gets mature especially after you've run it for a while doing that can be really, really difficult. I also think it's; I want to re-emphasize something you said which is the picking number, reverse engineering, and getting to that number doesn't mean that you have to sell at that point. We've been pretty public and I will continue to be public by saying that the best scenario for you is to create a business that you can own for your life, right? Because it's difficult to start a business; the cash flow that they build is great, the value that is in them as assets is also fantastic. So I'm a big believer in building and holding or buying and holding and growing but that doesn't mean that exiting shouldn't be an option. And so when you hit that number, if you're not ready to sell you can always move the goalposts as you suggested or create a new goal. But something that I know you've told me in an email where we were discussing this book is you said one of the goals is to not allow the business to outgrow its founder. And boy this is an issue that comes up time and time again that we see and that is business owners were really good at starting, really good at founding something and even growing it to a certain extent getting to a point where making that next shift is difficult. I always describe that the growth path of a business is a series of climbs and plateaus. You climb to a point and it starts to plateau and then you have to change the business a little bit. Maybe you have to add new people; maybe you have to add a different structure to the business. And once you do then hopefully you start climbing again and then you hit another plateau and then it's another shift or another restructuring of the company or maybe a new initiative. What point and is there any examples that you've seen where somebody has hit that point where business is just about to outgrow them and they were smart enough to be able to not let it do that? Joe: Yeah the climbing the plateaus, by the way, let's not forget the valleys, right? Yes, my name is Joe Valley but… Mark: Don't forget the valley. Joe: There are two valleys here, right? It's a climb, it's a plateau, and then boom there's a really nasty valley right there and you're in it. You got to climb out of it. That's why I think it's important to actually do something that you like; something that you enjoy a little bit. It could be something that you're passionate about because when those tough times come and as an entrepreneur they will unless I'm unique and nobody else has tough times. I don't think I'm unique. You're going to have to fight and climb back out of that valley and on the other side there's a mountain, a peak; not a plateau hopefully. And those are great success stories to tell and very sellable businesses. But the idea of a business outgrowing the founder is not original, right? I mean this is something I've seen throughout my own entrepreneurial life where I used to do radio advertising. I owned a radio direct response media buying agency back when there were 800 numbers associated with 60-second spot ads. I could have held that business and grown it but it would have required more and more overhead in terms of people. I don't like managing a lot of people. I tell you what your job is and how to do it and I expect that you're going to work hard and do the best you can. If you don't I'm kind of blunt unfortunately and fortunately in some ways. So if you're in a situation and I see this a lot where buyers sometimes naively say well if it's so great why are they selling it? And it is because the business more often than not has outgrown them. They wanted to live the 4-hour workweek. It turned into 30 and that's okay. And they've got 5 VA's and that's okay. But in order to take it beyond just a SaaS business that's doing 2 million in revenue, they need to hire 3 more developers. They don't want to go through the headache and hassle of that. Or to take it off of Amazon they need to learn SEO offline or email marketing or whatever it might be and that's not their skill set. Or it's hiring people and that's not their skill set. And they learned that one of the greatest ways to earn wealth is to sell a business. Now people that buy Walker's book have learned that they can; a different breed, a different mentality of an entrepreneur comes in. They're not the startup entrepreneurs. They come in and they take over where that startup entrepreneur left off. The business has outgrown them and they hand it off to somebody like Matt Howeth who can. He comes from the corporate world. He's always had lots of travel, lots of staff, and lots of hours. He gets it. He can take it and bring that business in and have a team of employees, a team of VA's and manage it and take it up to the next level because that's his passion. That's what he does. He gets it. The startup is not his passion. It's not his skill set. So one of the things that I think is critically important and sometimes this only comes with age and mistakes and failures and successes and that is to figure out who the hell you are. What kind of entrepreneur are you? Mark: That brings in mind 2 clients I've worked with in the past 14 years now. And one of them; I've quoted this story before but he came to me with a business, I've never talked to him about sharing his story so I won't say what he was selling. But he was selling a physical product. He had initially acquired this business for 5 figures, like a mid-5 figure level and immediately grew the business significantly to the point where it was doing 7 figures in top-line revenue, mid-6 figures in discretionary earnings and so when he gave it to me to sell one of my very first questions was why are you selling? You've been growing year over year, you're only adding value to the business, this looks like a fantastic business, you've got great rankings, great positioning great pricing; all these things working in your favor and he said well right now I store all of the inventory in an external garage on my property. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my son and I go out and we fill orders. It's really nice. It's like I don't have any more room for inventory and if I wanted to get another space I'm going to have to hire somebody and then I'm going to have to hire more people to handle the marketing. I just don't want to do that. I would rather cash out and move on. Meanwhile, another entrepreneur that I've dealt with, he was a CPA by trade and loved being on the buy-side and what he really, really enjoyed was taking a business that was somewhat complex, somewhat messy, somewhat inefficient in the way it was run and simplifying it. And I love; I've sold a couple of businesses for him, I love taking a look at where his businesses started. Their P&Ls were these super long crazy messes and by the time that he was ready to sell they were consolidated down into less than 30 lines because he simplified these businesses, really focused on this principle of 80:20 and said I'm going to just focus on what really makes sense and I'm going to get rid of all the rest of it. For him the act of cleaning it up was great but he would; unlike with Walker's book which is a lot of buy, build, and grow, his was I'm going to buy make more efficient and then I'm going to sell. And he did this several times and it was really fun to watch because he knew who he was. That first seller that I had, he knew who he was. He knew he didn't want to have a staff he had done that and didn't want to do it again. He loved running the business with his son. The second entrepreneur, he was a buyer, he knew what he liked, he also didn't want to have a large staff. There are other people out there that do want to build that team. There are people out there that say I want to have 100 million dollar exit so I'm going to buy a bunch of these businesses and build something or I'm going to acquire 15. They're all different types of entrepreneurs and everyone has different skill sets. Knowing who you are I think that right there is a great bit of advice but going back to what you were saying earlier Joe if you're so busy and in the weeds constantly and just running and hustling and hustling and hustling and never taking a moment to step back and to think about either the exit or about maybe this topic here of what type of entrepreneur are you, where do you want to see yourself in the next 5 years, what type of business operation do you want to have it's really hard to know where you're going and then your business drives you instead of driving your business and your career drives you instead of you driving your career. Joe: Yeah. Walker's book takes the mystery out of buying a business and the how-to and building it beyond that hence the title Buy Then Build or what he coined as acquisition entrepreneurship. My book The Exitpreneurs Playbook is going to take the mystery out of selling your business and setting those goals on what your exit is and reverse engineering a path to that. Now that I've said the title can we make fun of me in terms of predicting I don't know the future doom and gloom of this title because I did the opposite of what everybody told me to do? Mark: You know what? I like it. I remember doing this when I picked the Quiet Light Brokerage logo. I did 99 designs and I had everyone vote on different types and I hated what everybody chose. So I'm like well it's my business so I'm going to do my own thing. Joe: And you know it's a check, check, send something; I don't know, it must've been fall of last year and email out something about the Quiet Light logo and how it has stood the test of time so kudos to you. Yeah so I sent an e-mail out to a couple of dozen past clients that I sold their businesses and they're going to be part of the book. So part of the book is education and part inspiration; inspiration with them sharing some golden nuggets, wisdom, experience things that they wish they did differently. So I sent it out to them and then another say dozen of influencers that are in the space. People that we know well like Mike Jackness, Greg Mercer, Andrew Youderian, Ezra Firestone, things of that nature; people of that nature. And I think out of roughly 25 people Jason Yellowitz is the only one who said he liked Exitpreneur. Everyone else said Incredible Exits, Joe, it just rings, it rings. And there's been something about the term Exitpreneur that has stuck with me during the interview process and the more I said it out loud the more Brennan and I, and again she's my scribe, the more it just felt natural. Because that's what people are becoming when they sell their business, they're exitpreneurs. The difference between an entrepreneur and an exitpreneur is an entrepreneur is somebody that runs their own business but an exitpreneur is somebody that runs their own business and they have the knowledge and a plan. And I want to give them that knowledge in order to devise a plan and become one of those people that generate most of their wealth from an exit. So fingers crossed on that. Can I do a shameless plug right now for the Quiet Light Podcast where I think we're about 25 minutes in and just a little bit of a shameless plug? I have to tell you… Mark: I felt like this whole thing was a shameless plug for your upcoming book. Joe: I know but I don't even; I haven't even put up a website yet. There's no Facebook group. Really what it is, is a plug for education because part; in truth, I've said the same thing 8,000 times over and over. Maybe I'm just tired of saying it so I'm… Mark: With that Joe when I was on this trip recently I was in the airport and thinking about Mission, Vision, Values for Quiet Light Brokerage and I don't have the vision statement out yet but this component of education, if it's not part of our main vision it's definitely one of our core values and really something that I've built up. I was speaking to somebody just this morning before we recorded this about one of the goals or one of the mission; I'm sorry one of the core values of Quiet Light is to give entrepreneurs the right education and the right set of tools to be able to make good informed decisions. Because when I sold my business I didn't feel like I had that. I felt like I was misled. I felt like I was put in a position where somebody wanted to get me in an exclusive contract, promised me big bucks, and then when I went to go sell I was completely unprepared. I didn't know what was happening and so when I started Quiet Light the goal has been from day one not to tell anyone to sell but to give them the tools so that they know what their business is worth today, what it could be worth in the future, what's driving its value so that you can just make a good decision. That's your decision. So the education piece and I joke about this being a shameless plug; the reason that I'm excited about this, and I genuinely am excited that you're writing this book is because that education piece needs to be out there. And I love the idea; more than the idea, love the opportunity that we have to educate entrepreneurs of what's available to them if they transition from an entrepreneur to exitpreneur, understanding that, the bulk of the wealth that you build in your lifetime for most entrepreneurs will be at that exit. That might be 2 years from now, that might be 20 years from now, either case it's fine but having that plan to maximize that value and keeping the process smooth is important. Sorry, I totally cut you off of that but I want to emphasize that the education piece is really what I'm super excited about. Joe: Now we were going to do 2 parts of this podcast, a little bit on the book and a little bit about the philosophy behind Quiet Light's foundation and how you built the company and the entrepreneurial approach. So let's do a; I think we should do an entire podcast on this business and how it's built with entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs just to educate people more about who we are, what we do, and why we do it because I think it's necessary and you've done an incredible job with the model. But in terms of the education, I got a voicemail yesterday and this is the type of thing I want everybody out there that thinks they don't have time to do it and they're just keeping the wheels on the bus so to speak, take the time to make time for planning your exit using the educational tools that we provide whether it's this podcast or articles or Walker's book on my eventual book or having a conversation because that's an education tool. Have a conversation with an adviser at Quiet Light. Really do it. But I got a voicemail from somebody who I sold businesses for, very, very well off financially, runs a family office now, bought a business from Walker for around 8 million dollars in 2019. And he heard the podcast on product innovation, product development with Zack at Gembah. And he just left a voicemail yesterday saying hey man I just want to let you know on the way back home from Austin I got a chance to meet with Zack and we're going to go ahead and do some product innovation, product expansion, adding a number of new SKUs and accessories to the brand. I really appreciate it. I don't know if enough people tell you that we actually use the tools that you share so thank you. It's great to hear that. So thank you sir; I'm not going to say your first name, for reaching out and letting us know. For the rest of us this is the shameless plug part and I've said this, I said this at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and I said it in eCommerceFuel, Mark you and I have done now I think it was 114; I checked this morning, podcasts. So that's how many are up on iTunes. We've got a total of 31 reviews. They're all huge close to 5-star reviews. Thank you, everyone, who has given us reviews. I wasn't aware that we had any at all because we hardly ever plug it. And so I was at Blue Ribbon Mastermind talking to David Wood who will be a guest on the podcast in a few weeks. He's a personal coach and a good friend of Ezra's and he said something about he was on 70 podcasts last year and he chose which ones to go on based upon the number of reviews. So I checked ours. We have 31; pleasantly surprised. I checked the EcomCrew, Mike Jackness and he's got 81. So I stood on stage at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and I said everybody come on now Mike's not here, I want one more reviews than Mike has. He's been doing; I think he's done 3 times as many podcasts as us so we're doing okay. But please if you enjoy the podcast, if you like the podcast take a minute and go to iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you're listening and pop in a review. We greatly appreciate it and share the information and wealth with all the others that need it. Mark: Yeah. There's a video out there and I don't know if we're going to be posting it on our YouTube channel but there's a video out there of you making this plug at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and Ezra is standing there with you and he's thinking this is what you're using the stage time for? Like you have the opportunity to talk about what Quiet Light does and all you're doing is trying to beat Mike Jackness and like absolutely I'm trying to beat Mike Jackness that's it. Joe: We won't be sharing that video. That's not ours to share but I shared it with the team and had a good laugh at myself because of it so no doubt about it. Mike's a great guy. Ezra is a great guy. We don't mention people that we don't like obviously so if we've never mentioned you oh boy that's a long list; oh no, I can't say that. Let's just say thanks; final thanks, Mike Nuñez. Thank you, Mike. Mark: Yeah, Mike Nuñez, absolutely. I think that's a great way to end up this episode here. Let's do one in the future about the building of Quiet Light Brokerage and I'd also love to get feedback from people that have listened this far through this episode and are listening right now. Are there topics that you'd like to hear us talk about outside of bringing guests in? And we can bring on people within Quiet Light Brokerage, bring in Walker on the podcast again or Chuck or Brad or any of the many entrepreneurs that are working with Quiet Light Brokerage. Anything you want us to talk about specifically when it comes to buying or selling? We'd love to know, we want to produce content that you guys wanted to hear so feel free to hit me up Mark@QuietLightBrokerage or Inquiries@QuietLightBrokerage as well. Joe: Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Links and Resources: Quiet Light Brokerage

What is one of the surest paths to substantial wealth? Grow and sell a business. Today's episode is all about Joe's book project, “The Exitpreneurs Playbook.” Joe has over 8000 stories to tell about what it's like to buy, what it is like to sell, and ways to outsmart the typical entrepreneur process. Mark is interviewing Joe about this upcoming project, his motivations behind creating it, and how getting to the writing process carried its share of challenges. Joe believes that an exitpreneur should have the tools in hand to start, run, and grow their business for better decision making later on. He is not telling anyone to sell, he is offering them the strategies they need in order to be ready if they do. Episode Highlights: Joe's idea and the process of putting it into book format. Why he wanted to write the book. Reasons exit planning can be challenging for the business owner. The differences between an entrepreneur who is considering a sale versus one who has actually prepared an exit. How businesses often outgrow the founder and smart moves to make before that happens. The importance of reverse engineering to the goal for a better exit strategy. The difference between the entrepreneur and an exitpreneur. How Joe came up with the book title. Transcription: Mark: So Joe I was at an event recently in Salt Lake City and it was in just general kind of a conference meeting room for about 50 people or so and they had a lot of books in this place. And I was intrigued to just kind of look around and see what was there and you'll never guess what book was up on the shelf. Actually, do you want to guess? Joe: Yeah I want to guess. I'm looking around my office, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss? Mark: You know what? It actually was in there. Joe: It was in there. Mark: Not the one I'm referring to. Joe: The ONE Thing by John Keller? Now, wait let's call out one of our friends; Superfans by Pat Flynn? Mark: You know I don't know. There were a lot of entrepreneurial focused books so maybe that one was there; I don't know. Joe: Okay. Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel? Mark: Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel; yeah absolutely, that was on the shelf. In fact, they had multiple copies of it. They were giving that book away. And today; what is it? It's February 11th so we're a little bit past a year since Walker launched that book and it spent a year as number one on Amazon Bestseller in this category which is pretty fantastic. I mean obviously, we're super happy for Walker. He won an award for being the thought leader of the year through a major alliance of mergers and acquisition advisors. Joe: Huge. Mark: That is huge. He's had professors from Ivy League colleges come up and talk to him about the book. All of this leads me to something beyond just the accolades and that is the information that's out there in this space about what it's like to sell, what it's like to buy. Walker is talking on specifically which is the buy-side and how to use this as an investment vehicle, how to outsmart the Startup Game as he says and reduce some of that risk. But there's also a whole on the sell-side as well where people don't really know that their business is sellable or they don't think about it. But just yesterday I was reading something on the fastest way to build wealth; what is the fastest way to build wealth? And the conclusion that they had is the fastest way to build wealth is through building a business and selling it. This is one of the quickest ways to actually building wealth. And I know you've had guests on the podcast here who have talked about this process or you call it your Incredible Exits series. I'm really, really excited that you're writing a book on this and you're not calling it Incredible Exits despite everybody else's opinions that you should but it's these stories behind the scenes. Joe: Yeah I'm excited to be writing it finally. I sat down with some friends a year ago probably around a fire pit; maybe a year and a half ago because it was summertime. We're recording this in February of 2020 and I said look I'm making an announcement, I'm writing a book, I'm telling you guys to call me out on it and then I didn't do anything but I tried. I tried to write it. I tried to outline chapters. I tried to follow up… Mark: Hold on one second. You made this promise right on a fire pit with friends? Joe: Yes. Mark: How much did you consume before you made this promise? Joe: I'm a 2-drink maximum kind of guy, that's just the way I am. Mark: Okay. Joe: It's like giving myself an injection of the flu when I have more so it wasn't much. But I didn't get it done. It's a lot of work. So I followed the original book in a box method and didn't get it done at the scheduled time. I was at Brand Accelerator Live with our friend Scott Voelker last September and one of big Scott's announcements was that he actually wrote a book. And it is also here on my desk somewhere; where is it Scott? It's the Take Action Effect. I just turned my head away from the microphone, sorry folks. And I met his scribe; a young lady by the name of Brennan and I connected with her during the event and talked with her and said okay this is it I'm done. I'm hiring a scribe and I'm going to write the book. And I've talked to a number of people about it and let me just cover the process and then answer the question as to why the heck I'm doing this because it's a massive undertaking. The process is instead of actually writing a book myself with written words and a keyboard I get interviewed for I think it was 8 2-hour sessions; so 16 hours in interviews. First, we outlined the chapters and go through the whole process and instead of talking about; I mean writing an article or a chapter on seller's discretionary earnings and add-backs and the three levels of add-backs and all the different things that we talk about on a regular basis Brennan interviewed me. She transcribes the entire interview through UberConference and Rev.com for those that really want great transcription services. And now we're in the sort of lull between all of those interviews and me getting my first draft. They're going to give it to me in thirds. So the first one I will get will probably be I want to say mid to late March and then they'll drip it out in thirds every week for 3 weeks. They want to overwhelm me in terms of reviewing and editing. I still have a lot of technical stuff to add to it but it's really kicked the process into high gear. It's not cheap, let me tell you that. It's an expensive undertaking but I think given what we do for a living and how many people we're trying to help I think it's well worth it. Why am I writing a book? Walker's been an inspiration, very successful with Buy Then Build and the amount of people that he's been able to reach and help on the buy-side. We work with sell-side brokers or sell-side clients for the most part and I've done the math Mark, does it sound inconceivable that I've talked to 8,000 entrepreneurs over the last 8 years? Mark: Not at all. Joe: Yeah and that's probably a conservative number. I'm not saying I've had an in-depth evaluation with 8,000 of them but I have without a doubt talked to 8,000 and that does not count standing in front of a room with 3, 4, 500 people. And the challenge has been we've got to reach them one by one and I know that Walker's book has been as you said best seller. I think it's probably sold over 10,000 copies at this point. Mark: It's over 15 at least. Joe: 15,000 copies? Mark: Yeah, I actually talked to Walker about it a while ago. Joe: I think he told me something like 99% of books sells less than a hundred copies that are published. Now Walker, correct me if I'm wrong but it's pretty impressive. So to get what we share on those valuation calls into somebodies hands before, during, and after they have a valuation call and when they're in an audience that will give them every possible detail that we've developed over the last 8 plus years of doing what we do and sharing that in writing so that they can essentially change their mindset. And that's the goal of the book, it's to change their mindset from reaching out to us when they're sick and tired of running their business or they've had a bump where things get tougher and they say Gosh how can I sell this business? A buddy of mine told me I can get X multiple. I'm going to call Mark and say Mark how much can I sell my business for? I want to change people's mindsets. Instead of saying how much can I sell my business or more often they say how much is my business worth, I want them to say I want to build wealth like you said at the beginning and I want to sell my business for X dollars. I want to do that in 4 years. In order to do that, they need to understand where they are today. And the book is going to help them reverse engineer the path from where they are today to that exit so that they can do a partial valuation, get comfortable with brokers, and drive that path. I had a conversation with Mike Jackness recently and Mike talked about the fact that about what we do sometimes entrepreneurs just don't want to hear it because the idea of exit planning is so beyond what they're trying to do when they're just trying to keep the wheels on the bus, right? They're running out of inventory, they've got competitors coming at them from every angle, they're trying to do cash flow planning and it's just so hard that they can't see out the front window. The objective of the book is to sort of clear that window, have a clear path to an exit that they understand and it's a much better ride. I've been through it myself personally. You did it for me back in 2010. I could see nothing, understood nothing, we had a call, we had several calls and the light bulbs went off and I knew exactly the path to take and I'll tell you what operating my business became a lot more fun and exciting even though I was sick and tired of it after 5 years. Mark: You know the more I experience the business and grow as an entrepreneur the more I'm learning. With anything dealing with a goal really the best way to achieve these things is what you've said, reverse engineer it. Rather than just kind of impulsively decide that I'm going to do something figure out where you want to be and then reverse engineer. But in order to reverse engineer it, you need to understand the mechanisms that are going on to create that value. You're trying with this book to create a shift in the mindset of entrepreneurs, right? By the way, folks if you haven't figured this out we don't have a guest; Joe is the guest. I'm going to interview Joe about the book and maybe we'll talk a little bit about what it is like to do what Joe and I've been doing and everyone else at Quiet Light. Joe: Right, we're co-guests. We're co-hosts and co-guests today because I want to grill you too. Mark: Very good. Alright, I want to start out by saying okay let's talk about your experience. You've been doing this for 8 years. You've done literally tens of millions of dollars of transactions on your own within Quiet Light Brokerage. Joe: I'm fastly closing in on 100 million. Mark: That's right you are. You are; absolutely. Joe: Inaudible[0:11:17.8] 12 to 18 months; pretty shocking. That's amazing. Mark: Absolutely amazing. Talk to me about the mindset that you often see or most naturally see in an entrepreneur that comes to us to sell versus those rare cases of somebody who has planned to sell and what is the difference in the actual process value and stress levels I would say for everyone involved. Joe: Yeah. Look all the success stories that you guys hear about on the Incredible Exits for the most part those are people that had the mindset that they wanted to determine and plan out their exit. They got an education, they figured out what their exit goal was and they called Mark, myself, Jason, Amanda, Chuck, anyone of us and reverse engineer the path to that. They didn't call and say what's your fee, okay I want to list. It was this how does this whole thing work and then we worked with them over a 6, 12, or 18 month period sometimes even more. Those are the success stories that you're hearing about. The people you're not hearing about never sell their business because they call. They might have a call like this or I was just at eCommerceFuel last week as an event and kudos to Andrew Youderian and all the guests and all the people that are there; brilliant, so many smart folks. But even with that high level of entrepreneurial success and drive I still get e-mails like I've gotten this week which is a great chat last week, great presentation. I did a presentation with Mike about the sales of ColorIt. You've really inspired me to sort of try this path to an exit. And then I said okay well this is what I need. Yeah, I don't know I'm so busy with adding SKUs and I'm not really there yet. I'm not ready to sell yet. I'm not ready to think about selling yet. Whereas the yet it should be now regardless of where you are in the business. These people are already doing; the 2 that I'm thinking about where I got the e-mails like the one I don't know his growth. Well, I could do the math on his growth but the discretionary stands out that he's close to 600,000 in discretionary earnings and it is 5 to 6 times more than he ever made in his prior day job. And so he's trying to work towards an exit and retirement. The other was doing nearly 10 million in revenue and had a 25% decline. He's young, he's under 30 years old. And neither of these guys are really ready to exit. Of course, they're not ready to exit but I want them to set a financial goal. I don't care if it's 3 to 5 years from now. Set that goal. I need to exit for X in order to exit. And then figure out where they are, get the education, and work towards that. In 5 years if they're not ready to sell then move the goal post, move it 6 years down the road or 7 years down the road. That is as you said at the beginning the surest way to real financial wealth. But we're not talking about them yet because they're pausing, they're hesitating, they're not going to do it. Those are the stories that I talk about a little bit in the book. There's somebody that was my first million-dollar listing back in the day at Quiet Light. I remember it well. I'm not going to name names. We'll call him Big Mike. That's not his name but we'll call him Big Mike. He had no financials; none whatsoever. And I remember sitting over Christmas break taking all of his bank statements and I actually created the profit and loss statement myself. That is a no-no. We do not do that anymore. No. But I did it. I got it all detailed and accurate and listed the business for 1.1 million. I got an offer for 800 from the gentleman that you sold his business once upon a time. It was actually a good offer because the revenue trends were in decline. And Big Mike said to me well why would I accept it all I have to do is XYZ over the next 12 months and I'll make a quarter of a million dollars and then we can sell the business for 1.2, 1.3 million. And I had a great deal of experience in paid advertising at the time as you know because I just sold my business. This was probably 2012 or early '13. And so we walked through all the possibilities, what to do and how to do it and off he went. The problem was that Big Mike's heart was not in it anymore. He had run up all of his personal debt and personal expenses; his overhead was very high. He lived the life of a very, very successful entrepreneur and his business was no longer trending that way so money was getting tight. He didn't have the ability to pull money from the business and put it into the ad spend that he needed to to reverse it. And so every year for the following 3 years I got any mail from Big Mike that said something along the lines of hey my revenue and profit is at XYZ, can we sell the business for this? And each year it went from that offer from Tony of 800 to the value really was in about 600 the next year. And then the next year he sent me an e-mail it was really based upon what he had given me, about 500. The last time he sent me an e-mail it was about 400. Every single time I replied with based upon what you've given me which is just an email with numbers and I'd say your business value was probably X. Please run a profit and loss statement out of Quickbooks or Xero and export it to Excel with a monthly view. Silence, nothing for 12 more months because he didn't take the necessary steps to do what you have to do in protecting your most valuable asset, in his case his business. And so he's probably got a job, unfortunately. And that's the path unfortunately too many people go down or they learn from the mistakes and they hang up their hat on this particular business. They can't sell it and they move on to another one and hopefully learn from that mistake but it's a painful one. I just want to see people learn from that and therefore the painful process of writing a book. Mark: You know it's great to focus on the success stories. We like success stories. I like talking about success stories that make me happy. But for all these success stories that you have shared so far through the podcast that you'll be sharing through this book we also have the stories like that. And I could probably rattle off a number as well. Maybe I'll start a new podcast or write a book called Unincredible Exits or Nasty Exits or something like that. It will be real depressing and no one will ever want to read it. But you're absolutely right in; that example is really good. That example shows what we see so often from entrepreneurs where they're running; they're used to the hustle, they're used to the grind, they're used to being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to be able to correct something but sometimes when a business gets mature especially after you've run it for a while doing that can be really, really difficult. I also think it's; I want to re-emphasize something you said which is the picking number, reverse engineering, and getting to that number doesn't mean that you have to sell at that point. We've been pretty public and I will continue to be public by saying that the best scenario for you is to create a business that you can own for your life, right? Because it's difficult to start a business; the cash flow that they build is great, the value that is in them as assets is also fantastic. So I'm a big believer in building and holding or buying and holding and growing but that doesn't mean that exiting shouldn't be an option. And so when you hit that number, if you're not ready to sell you can always move the goalposts as you suggested or create a new goal. But something that I know you've told me in an email where we were discussing this book is you said one of the goals is to not allow the business to outgrow its founder. And boy this is an issue that comes up time and time again that we see and that is business owners were really good at starting, really good at founding something and even growing it to a certain extent getting to a point where making that next shift is difficult. I always describe that the growth path of a business is a series of climbs and plateaus. You climb to a point and it starts to plateau and then you have to change the business a little bit. Maybe you have to add new people; maybe you have to add a different structure to the business. And once you do then hopefully you start climbing again and then you hit another plateau and then it's another shift or another restructuring of the company or maybe a new initiative. What point and is there any examples that you've seen where somebody has hit that point where business is just about to outgrow them and they were smart enough to be able to not let it do that? Joe: Yeah the climbing the plateaus, by the way, let's not forget the valleys, right? Yes, my name is Joe Valley but… Mark: Don't forget the valley. Joe: There are two valleys here, right? It's a climb, it's a plateau, and then boom there's a really nasty valley right there and you're in it. You got to climb out of it. That's why I think it's important to actually do something that you like; something that you enjoy a little bit. It could be something that you're passionate about because when those tough times come and as an entrepreneur they will unless I'm unique and nobody else has tough times. I don't think I'm unique. You're going to have to fight and climb back out of that valley and on the other side there's a mountain, a peak; not a plateau hopefully. And those are great success stories to tell and very sellable businesses. But the idea of a business outgrowing the founder is not original, right? I mean this is something I've seen throughout my own entrepreneurial life where I used to do radio advertising. I owned a radio direct response media buying agency back when there were 800 numbers associated with 60-second spot ads. I could have held that business and grown it but it would have required more and more overhead in terms of people. I don't like managing a lot of people. I tell you what your job is and how to do it and I expect that you're going to work hard and do the best you can. If you don't I'm kind of blunt unfortunately and fortunately in some ways. So if you're in a situation and I see this a lot where buyers sometimes naively say well if it's so great why are they selling it? And it is because the business more often than not has outgrown them. They wanted to live the 4-hour workweek. It turned into 30 and that's okay. And they've got 5 VA's and that's okay. But in order to take it beyond just a SaaS business that's doing 2 million in revenue, they need to hire 3 more developers. They don't want to go through the headache and hassle of that. Or to take it off of Amazon they need to learn SEO offline or email marketing or whatever it might be and that's not their skill set. Or it's hiring people and that's not their skill set. And they learned that one of the greatest ways to earn wealth is to sell a business. Now people that buy Walker's book have learned that they can; a different breed, a different mentality of an entrepreneur comes in. They're not the startup entrepreneurs. They come in and they take over where that startup entrepreneur left off. The business has outgrown them and they hand it off to somebody like Matt Howeth who can. He comes from the corporate world. He's always had lots of travel, lots of staff, and lots of hours. He gets it. He can take it and bring that business in and have a team of employees, a team of VA's and manage it and take it up to the next level because that's his passion. That's what he does. He gets it. The startup is not his passion. It's not his skill set. So one of the things that I think is critically important and sometimes this only comes with age and mistakes and failures and successes and that is to figure out who the hell you are. What kind of entrepreneur are you? Mark: That brings in mind 2 clients I've worked with in the past 14 years now. And one of them; I've quoted this story before but he came to me with a business, I've never talked to him about sharing his story so I won't say what he was selling. But he was selling a physical product. He had initially acquired this business for 5 figures, like a mid-5 figure level and immediately grew the business significantly to the point where it was doing 7 figures in top-line revenue, mid-6 figures in discretionary earnings and so when he gave it to me to sell one of my very first questions was why are you selling? You've been growing year over year, you're only adding value to the business, this looks like a fantastic business, you've got great rankings, great positioning great pricing; all these things working in your favor and he said well right now I store all of the inventory in an external garage on my property. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my son and I go out and we fill orders. It's really nice. It's like I don't have any more room for inventory and if I wanted to get another space I'm going to have to hire somebody and then I'm going to have to hire more people to handle the marketing. I just don't want to do that. I would rather cash out and move on. Meanwhile, another entrepreneur that I've dealt with, he was a CPA by trade and loved being on the buy-side and what he really, really enjoyed was taking a business that was somewhat complex, somewhat messy, somewhat inefficient in the way it was run and simplifying it. And I love; I've sold a couple of businesses for him, I love taking a look at where his businesses started. Their P&Ls were these super long crazy messes and by the time that he was ready to sell they were consolidated down into less than 30 lines because he simplified these businesses, really focused on this principle of 80:20 and said I'm going to just focus on what really makes sense and I'm going to get rid of all the rest of it. For him the act of cleaning it up was great but he would; unlike with Walker's book which is a lot of buy, build, and grow, his was I'm going to buy make more efficient and then I'm going to sell. And he did this several times and it was really fun to watch because he knew who he was. That first seller that I had, he knew who he was. He knew he didn't want to have a staff he had done that and didn't want to do it again. He loved running the business with his son. The second entrepreneur, he was a buyer, he knew what he liked, he also didn't want to have a large staff. There are other people out there that do want to build that team. There are people out there that say I want to have 100 million dollar exit so I'm going to buy a bunch of these businesses and build something or I'm going to acquire 15. They're all different types of entrepreneurs and everyone has different skill sets. Knowing who you are I think that right there is a great bit of advice but going back to what you were saying earlier Joe if you're so busy and in the weeds constantly and just running and hustling and hustling and hustling and never taking a moment to step back and to think about either the exit or about maybe this topic here of what type of entrepreneur are you, where do you want to see yourself in the next 5 years, what type of business operation do you want to have it's really hard to know where you're going and then your business drives you instead of driving your business and your career drives you instead of you driving your career. Joe: Yeah. Walker's book takes the mystery out of buying a business and the how-to and building it beyond that hence the title Buy Then Build or what he coined as acquisition entrepreneurship. My book The Exitpreneurs Playbook is going to take the mystery out of selling your business and setting those goals on what your exit is and reverse engineering a path to that. Now that I've said the title can we make fun of me in terms of predicting I don't know the future doom and gloom of this title because I did the opposite of what everybody told me to do? Mark: You know what? I like it. I remember doing this when I picked the Quiet Light Brokerage logo. I did 99 designs and I had everyone vote on different types and I hated what everybody chose. So I'm like well it's my business so I'm going to do my own thing. Joe: And you know it's a check, check, send something; I don't know, it must've been fall of last year and email out something about the Quiet Light logo and how it has stood the test of time so kudos to you. Yeah so I sent an e-mail out to a couple of dozen past clients that I sold their businesses and they're going to be part of the book. So part of the book is education and part inspiration; inspiration with them sharing some golden nuggets, wisdom, experience things that they wish they did differently. So I sent it out to them and then another say dozen of influencers that are in the space. People that we know well like Mike Jackness, Greg Mercer, Andrew Youderian, Ezra Firestone, things of that nature; people of that nature. And I think out of roughly 25 people Jason Yellowitz is the only one who said he liked Exitpreneur. Everyone else said Incredible Exits, Joe, it just rings, it rings. And there's been something about the term Exitpreneur that has stuck with me during the interview process and the more I said it out loud the more Brennan and I, and again she's my scribe, the more it just felt natural. Because that's what people are becoming when they sell their business, they're exitpreneurs. The difference between an entrepreneur and an exitpreneur is an entrepreneur is somebody that runs their own business but an exitpreneur is somebody that runs their own business and they have the knowledge and a plan. And I want to give them that knowledge in order to devise a plan and become one of those people that generate most of their wealth from an exit. So fingers crossed on that. Can I do a shameless plug right now for the Quiet Light Podcast where I think we're about 25 minutes in and just a little bit of a shameless plug? I have to tell you… Mark: I felt like this whole thing was a shameless plug for your upcoming book. Joe: I know but I don't even; I haven't even put up a website yet. There's no Facebook group. Really what it is, is a plug for education because part; in truth, I've said the same thing 8,000 times over and over. Maybe I'm just tired of saying it so I'm… Mark: With that Joe when I was on this trip recently I was in the airport and thinking about Mission, Vision, Values for Quiet Light Brokerage and I don't have the vision statement out yet but this component of education, if it's not part of our main vision it's definitely one of our core values and really something that I've built up. I was speaking to somebody just this morning before we recorded this about one of the goals or one of the mission; I'm sorry one of the core values of Quiet Light is to give entrepreneurs the right education and the right set of tools to be able to make good informed decisions. Because when I sold my business I didn't feel like I had that. I felt like I was misled. I felt like I was put in a position where somebody wanted to get me in an exclusive contract, promised me big bucks, and then when I went to go sell I was completely unprepared. I didn't know what was happening and so when I started Quiet Light the goal has been from day one not to tell anyone to sell but to give them the tools so that they know what their business is worth today, what it could be worth in the future, what's driving its value so that you can just make a good decision. That's your decision. So the education piece and I joke about this being a shameless plug; the reason that I'm excited about this, and I genuinely am excited that you're writing this book is because that education piece needs to be out there. And I love the idea; more than the idea, love the opportunity that we have to educate entrepreneurs of what's available to them if they transition from an entrepreneur to exitpreneur, understanding that, the bulk of the wealth that you build in your lifetime for most entrepreneurs will be at that exit. That might be 2 years from now, that might be 20 years from now, either case it's fine but having that plan to maximize that value and keeping the process smooth is important. Sorry, I totally cut you off of that but I want to emphasize that the education piece is really what I'm super excited about. Joe: Now we were going to do 2 parts of this podcast, a little bit on the book and a little bit about the philosophy behind Quiet Light's foundation and how you built the company and the entrepreneurial approach. So let's do a; I think we should do an entire podcast on this business and how it's built with entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs just to educate people more about who we are, what we do, and why we do it because I think it's necessary and you've done an incredible job with the model. But in terms of the education, I got a voicemail yesterday and this is the type of thing I want everybody out there that thinks they don't have time to do it and they're just keeping the wheels on the bus so to speak, take the time to make time for planning your exit using the educational tools that we provide whether it's this podcast or articles or Walker's book on my eventual book or having a conversation because that's an education tool. Have a conversation with an adviser at Quiet Light. Really do it. But I got a voicemail from somebody who I sold businesses for, very, very well off financially, runs a family office now, bought a business from Walker for around 8 million dollars in 2019. And he heard the podcast on product innovation, product development with Zack at Gembah. And he just left a voicemail yesterday saying hey man I just want to let you know on the way back home from Austin I got a chance to meet with Zack and we're going to go ahead and do some product innovation, product expansion, adding a number of new SKUs and accessories to the brand. I really appreciate it. I don't know if enough people tell you that we actually use the tools that you share so thank you. It's great to hear that. So thank you sir; I'm not going to say your first name, for reaching out and letting us know. For the rest of us this is the shameless plug part and I've said this, I said this at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and I said it in eCommerceFuel, Mark you and I have done now I think it was 114; I checked this morning, podcasts. So that's how many are up on iTunes. We've got a total of 31 reviews. They're all huge close to 5-star reviews. Thank you, everyone, who has given us reviews. I wasn't aware that we had any at all because we hardly ever plug it. And so I was at Blue Ribbon Mastermind talking to David Wood who will be a guest on the podcast in a few weeks. He's a personal coach and a good friend of Ezra's and he said something about he was on 70 podcasts last year and he chose which ones to go on based upon the number of reviews. So I checked ours. We have 31; pleasantly surprised. I checked the EcomCrew, Mike Jackness and he's got 81. So I stood on stage at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and I said everybody come on now Mike's not here, I want one more reviews than Mike has. He's been doing; I think he's done 3 times as many podcasts as us so we're doing okay. But please if you enjoy the podcast, if you like the podcast take a minute and go to iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you're listening and pop in a review. We greatly appreciate it and share the information and wealth with all the others that need it. Mark: Yeah. There's a video out there and I don't know if we're going to be posting it on our YouTube channel but there's a video out there of you making this plug at Blue Ribbon Mastermind and Ezra is standing there with you and he's thinking this is what you're using the stage time for? Like you have the opportunity to talk about what Quiet Light does and all you're doing is trying to beat Mike Jackness and like absolutely I'm trying to beat Mike Jackness that's it. Joe: We won't be sharing that video. That's not ours to share but I shared it with the team and had a good laugh at myself because of it so no doubt about it. Mike's a great guy. Ezra is a great guy. We don't mention people that we don't like obviously so if we've never mentioned you oh boy that's a long list; oh no, I can't say that. Let's just say thanks; final thanks, Mike Nuñez. Thank you, Mike. Mark: Yeah, Mike Nuñez, absolutely. I think that's a great way to end up this episode here. Let's do one in the future about the building of Quiet Light Brokerage and I'd also love to get feedback from people that have listened this far through this episode and are listening right now. Are there topics that you'd like to hear us talk about outside of bringing guests in? And we can bring on people within Quiet Light Brokerage, bring in Walker on the podcast again or Chuck or Brad or any of the many entrepreneurs that are working with Quiet Light Brokerage. Anything you want us to talk about specifically when it comes to buying or selling? We'd love to know, we want to produce content that you guys wanted to hear so feel free to hit me up Mark@QuietLightBrokerage or Inquiries@QuietLightBrokerage as well. Joe: Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Links and Resources: Quiet Light Brokerage

One year ago we listed a business that created a massive amount of activity, garnering ten offers, many above asking price. As part of our incredible exit series, today we welcome a seller who has had some time to reflect on all the things he did right in his sale and share what he has been up to since. Paul Anderson started his career as an accountant, taking the safe path and spending ten years in corporate America. An increasing lack of passion led him to start to build his own lifeboat. He avidly studied Amazon FBA and learned by following experts in the e-commerce space. Although his first launch failed he carried on, honing his awareness of product opportunities out there and eventually he hit it big. Today Paul delves into the building of the business, the pillars of his success, and the components of his path to becoming an exitpreneur. Episode Highlights: Paul's first product's failure to launch and what he learned. How he sourced the second product and what happened in the last quarter of 2016. Funding subsequent stock and the challenges of inventory planning. How Paul stands on all four pillars of a successfully built business as well as that invisible fifth pillar. The scheduling and nitty gritty of the sale process. How the final buyer was chosen and the deciding factors for Paul. Why the highest bidder does not always win. The toughest challenges of running the business. Why Paul decided to sell. What he has been doing since the sale. Tips for building a successful content website. Transcription: Mark: So almost one year ago to the date of the recording of this episode of the podcast I was on a car ride with Joe; you Joe from where was it? It was from Dallas down to Houston and then Houston back up to Dallas. We were meeting with a good friend of ours that lived in Houston and while we were in that car ride you had launched a new listing that went absolutely berserk. And I've referenced this; I think we've actually talked about this on the podcast a few times, I've referenced this deal because it was one of these outlier deals that seem to check every single box and the result was just a massive amount of requests for phone calls and I believe 10 offers within a very short amount of time. And it's been a year since that launched and obviously, the deal closed which we're super happy about but now you finally get to have the seller on the podcast talking about all the things that he did right. Joe: Yeah it's a great time because it's a year out so he gets to look back. And over the years of doing this podcast the people listening have heard us talk about the four pillars; risk, growth, transferability, and documentation and someone might go yeah ok whatever, the reality is that they matter. Paul Anderson sold his business; 10 offers, he checked off every one of these pillars and the six little subtitles under each pillar and then the fifth one which I know Mark there's no fifth pillar, but the fifth one is the man or person or entrepreneur behind the business. Paul being a former CPA turned entrepreneur who outsourced his bookkeeping to a bookkeeper is just a super likable guy, stay at home dad, buttoned up in so many different ways. The end result is I had to clear his schedule; he basically had three conference calls with highly qualified buyers for five days in a row. He was exhausted from it because each one was… Joe: So you had 15 conference calls then. Paul: 15 conference calls. Joe: And I remember again we were in the car going back up to Dallas and you were on the phone pretty much constantly telling people okay let me see if I can arrange a time for you. So there was a lot more requests for conference calls on this deal. Paul: A lot more requests and we say we had 10 offers but finally a few people dropped out because they just didn't want to compete because they knew what it is going to be. And the funny thing is people get concerned about that and we always say right up front look don't get caught up in the hype of multiple offers, don't go beyond your comfort level, offer-wise. We want you to make an offer that works for you and hopefully will work for the seller as well because we want it to go all the way from letter of intent through to due diligence and that's exactly what we wound up with. And oddly enough Paul did not choose as we always say they don't necessarily choose the highest price. He didn't do that. He picked the offer that was best for him and I think it was somewhere $150,000 lower than the highest price. So we talked about a little bit of that process, what makes a good seller, a good buyer, and then we talked about what he's doing today which is really interesting as well so hopefully, everybody will enjoy this podcast. Joe: Absolutely. Paul: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey folks. Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast and today I have an Incredible Exits client on the phone with me. It's Paul Anderson. We sold Paul's business I think; when was it, Paul? Paul: March of last year, so a little under a year ago. Joe: Spring of 2019; so a little under a year ago. So we're going to talk about Paul's exit. We're going to talk about what Paul went through when he built the business, sold the business after he sold the business, and what he's doing now so we're going to get the full picture. Paul welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Paul: Thanks Joe, good to be here. Good to talk to you. Joe: So for the folks listening why don't you give a little bit of background on your professional pedigree and your entrepreneurial journey? Paul: Yeah, sure. So I actually studied accounting and followed that path. I was kind of one of those people that never really knew what I wanted to do. Like some people I think they're just like hey I want to be a TV news reporter or a journalist, I never really had that strong thing tapped me on the shoulder that said this is what you should do so I took a pretty safe practical path. I went into accounting and got my CPA. I spent about 10 years working in corporate America doing accounting and finance jobs and didn't really ever feel like that passion and eventually it started to kind of wear me down. I got to the point where I had to think of something else to do and try to build my own little lifeboat to escape from that because something inside me just didn't feel right anymore doing that. So that's kind of what led into starting a business. So that's in 2016. Somewhere; I don't even remember where I started to hear about Amazon FBA and I kind of consumed everything I could about it like podcasts, there's this guy Manny Coats inaudible[00:06:09.6] Helium10, he had a great podcast back then, Amazing Seller; there's all sorts of good stuff online about the model and that's kind of how it started and I started really small. We can get into it from there but that was kind of the first step, learning about it and seeing like oh I think I could do this. Joe: So you learned about it from podcasts; you didn't pay for a course or anything like that, you were absorbing free information from experts in the space. Paul: I never bought a single course it was all podcasts, Facebook groups, Reddit forums, and I was just… Joe: I love it. Paul: Yeah I can tell you about the first launch which was a total fail but that was like my training course like the very first launch because I learned. Joe: Failure is a great lesson. How much money did you pull together to launch the business and were you working at that point in the CPA business? Paul: Yeah I was still working. It was 2016, I put $5,000 in to do; most of it was an inventory buy so I was on Alibaba like at night trying to find my suppliers talking with China and I put in probably about 5,000 bucks to start on my first product. Joe: Okay. And you just mentioned Helium10; did you use Helium10 to help you find that first product? Paul: Yes. So it's funny like almost all the products I launched I've kind of like encountered in the real world somewhere and the product that turned out to be my big business was I kind of got onto it from a discussion with my parents. We're just having a casual discussion like you would have many times a day and they mentioned this particular thing and I would always in my iPhone put down; anything that seemed interesting I would just like log it in there and then I come back to it. So I had a list of 20 to 30 things going and I went back and started doing some research. I actually was using Jungle Scout back then and I switched over to Helium10 for everything now. Joe: Oh they're both great products; both of them. Manny and Greg have both been on the podcast; great guys. Paul: Yeah, for sure. So I kind of punched it in there and said like oh this looks like; the numbers look good and that's kind of how it started but it really was that conversation being like; I think if there's a lesson there it's being aware, we have so many kinds of filters and blinders on like if you really put yourself in the headspace of looking for opportunities you'd be surprised how many little things you read online or you hear about through friends like this is really popular; there's just all sorts of those little things that pop up that could turn out to be big businesses. Joe: So pay attention to your surroundings; the stuff that you use every day, emerging products in categories and niches and try to pay attention to and think is there an opportunity? Did you use any tools to see if a lot of people were selling in that particular category and that particular product? Paul: I mean Jungle Scout helps with that but mainly you can just go on and kind of assess like if page one everyone's got a thousand reviews and they're really well-known brands or something that's probably going to be a tough place to break into. Joe: Tough barrier; okay. So tell us about your first test, it was an epic fail? Paul: Yeah, so I was really pumped and thought like here it is, this is going to be like my ticket out of full-time work and it's going to be amazing and it was actually an accessory. Have you ever heard of pour-over coffee? Joe: Yeah. Paul: So that was kind of just bubbling up, seeming like oh this is really a trending product… Joe: Too much work; I never bought it because… Paul: Too much work, yeah, but there's a lot of people that are really into the craft obviously a coffee one and having some artisan experience. So I sourced these little wooden coffee stands that's basically used to make pour-over coffee. And it was kind of a cool thing but it turns out products made out of wood can crack and can break and have issues and I was not an expert at sourcing at that point in time so the long story short a lot of the products ended up cracking and breaking. And then once you start getting all these one-star reviews and returns; like my garage was full all around with carts of returned inventory and there wasn't that much demand I think. At the start, I was thinking oh you really got a niche down into this little tiny space and own that and there just wasn't quite enough demand in that space either. So I kind of learned to be a little smarter on sourcing and just to look for ways that things can go wrong inaudible[00:10:31.6] thing that's just so niche that like even if you execute and everything is great like you're going to be selling a couple of units a day. Joe: So how much money did you test and lose on that first product launch? Paul: So that was about 5,000 bucks in and I didn't take to bad a bee but I think I lost about a thousand dollars on it which isn't bad. Joe: Oh that's not bad. Paul: Yeah. Joe: Not enough to make you go away and say okay this didn't work I'm done; I'm going to go back to the corporate world. You got a taste for it and you said okay I just picked the wrong product. Paul: Exactly. And I mean I was still in the corporate world and like 5,000 bucks it's not like a lot of money at the time so it wasn't like I was; I'm like yeah whatever it doesn't matter. At that point, the stakes felt real and high. Joe: Yeah. Paul: Because it definitely was like I can see the power here on Amazon it's just like finding the right thing to really get this thing spinning. Joe: Okay. So you learned a lesson; you only lost 20% of your money but you get an excellent education from it better than any course you could have ever purchased. You went out there tried it, failed, learned, and didn't lose so much that you couldn't do it again. So you came up with another product niche and decided to go at it again? Paul: Exactly yes. So then I was actually going over to; are you familiar with the Canton Fair which is the big supplier…? Joe: Yeah. Paul: So I had a trip booked to go over there and kind of in-between going there… Joe: Just out of curiosity did you book it with a group or was it just you? Paul: Just me and my wife went over. Joe: Oh okay, because I was just talking to Athena from China Magic and they have a group of folks that go on a regular basis for those that are terrified to go alone. So you and your wife chose to book a flight to China and go to the Canton Fair alone. Paul: I loved it. It was really, really full out and I'm eager to go over there. Joe: Okay. Paul: I actually ended up finding my supplier on Alibaba before I went so I can't really say that the trip necessarily paid off in terms of like… Joe: Did you connect with him in person when you got to the Canton Fair? Paul: No because it was still too early and he was pretty far away from the Canton Fair. I think it helped me really see kind of like the culture of China and doing business with China and I think just a little savvier about how things work. So it was a great education for that and just like a lot of fun to check it out; I mean the place is just massive, like multiple football fields. Anything you want to ever source it would be out there so it was a super interesting spot. But anyway back to your second question so yes I stumbled upon this other product and started kind of the wheels turning in 2016 to source it. I got it on I think in the fall of 2016 and I remember that Q4 for Amazon or e-commerce is like the prime time and I remember just refreshing that seller app that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like all through up until Christmas and it was just mind-blowing the sales that were coming in off this new product. Joe: What was it like your first day that you got a sale, how many sales did you have all together; do you remember? Paul: Oh I mean it started slow. The first thing was probably just two or three units. I mean it's really; it was in such a momentum game like when you have no momentum it's hard to keep momentum and then once you get this momentum going and the wheels start spinning it can blow your mind like the amount of sales that… Joe: And that actually blew our mind within the first month or in that first quarter like what did you wind up with on the biggest day within a couple of months of launching it in the Q4 of '16? Paul: I don't want to say maybe like $8,000 of sales there. Joe: Oh, wow. Paul: Something big like and then when you look at the profits from that it's like wow I made more money like on this one day than; and I had a pretty decent corporate job, I'm like this is crazy like the potential. So the hooks kind of got in me right there and then '16 was kind of just getting off the ground and then the next year is when the ball really started to roll. Joe: When you started to get revenue in the fourth quarter of 2016 and sales started to come in you had euphoria with the fact that you were getting that kind of revenue and making more money in one day than you made perhaps in a month in the corporate world but did you also have the fear of oh my God I'm going to run out of inventory? Paul: I did. Joe: Okay. Paul: Yeah, inventory is like not something glamorous to talk about and you don't really hear about it that much in podcasts or anything else but it's like running a physical products company doing an Amazon business like the inventory planning is so difficult because your sales can change on a dime. inaudible[00:15:20.7] your supplier 30 days early to make something and another 30 days to put them on a ship to get it over here. So you've got these difficult variables to manage that can leave you stocked out or even a little bit too much stuck so that's always a tough thing to manage. Joe: Awesome. I don't think I've ever met an Amazon seller or an e-commerce business person that's been growing rapidly that's not run out of inventory at one point or another. All right, so you started with $5,000, did a test, failed, how long between the first failed test and the second product that took off; how many months was it? Paul: That was about three months I think. Joe: Okay, and all the time you kept your day job which is fantastic. So you've got some revenue, you've got some money in the account that's transferred to your business account, at what point did you order more inventory with and did you just use that money or did you sit down and talk as a family and say okay this is a winner we need to take a home equity line of credit; how did you fund the rest of the inventory purchases? Paul: It was all really funded with profits. Joe: It was? Okay. Paul: Yeah, it was. Joe: And you didn't have to take any money out for living expenses because you had your day job so that's perfect. Paul: Yeah. If I wouldn't have my day job it would have made it much more difficult but luckily I had some steady income coming in on the day job and then I was able to just take the profits and reinvest them back in and just go from there. Joe: Fast forwarding you had an amazing 2017, an amazing 2018; strong year over year growth, like huge year over year growth. For those listening, Paul's business was listed again spring of 2019 and it's those perfect situation folks where we talk about the four pillars of a sellable business and that invisible fifth one which is the person behind the business and that's Paul. We have a 30-month-old Amazon business with an incredible brand that's growing rapidly year over year. The financials we're set up impeccably. Paul is a CPA but he did something incredible which was what? You outsourced the books to an e-commerce bookkeeper; brilliant by the way. So those of you that are out there saying oh I can do this I'm not going to pay a few hundred bucks to a bookkeeper we've got a CPA here that chose to outsource to an e-commerce bookkeeper because he can do better things than bookkeeping with his time like grow a multi-million dollar Amazon brand which is exactly what you did. Your business checks so many boxes. It was SBA eligible. You were the owner behind the business. You built trust. People believed in you. During the recorded video interview, you're the first person; and I keep asking people to do it now, you're the first person that ever sat in front of the camera, reached down picked up the product and demonstrated the product. You showed the new packaging that you had just done. It was beautiful and the end result was an overwhelming request to buy the business, conference calls where you had to clear your schedule for a week. I said Paul cancel everything, right? We had to clear it and we ended up with I think three calls with qualified buyers every day for five days. We wound up with 10 total offers. I think we were at; the top one was something like $150,000 over asking price. Paul: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, and we say this all the time that it's not always the offer that comes in with the highest number, it's the right fit more than anything else. We had; of the 10 offers, I think we had maybe six that were SBA and four that were cash. You ended up choosing a cash buyer and not just because it was a cash buyer but also the person behind the business. We did video interviews between the buyer and seller. How much did that matter and how much of a difference did that make for you? Paul: The interviews mattered a ton. I mean that was the deciding factor because when I went into the process I just thought like well it's pretty simple, right? You take the highest number and the highest bidder wins but as you get into it and talk to different people it's like a huge diverse set of backgrounds that people are coming through Quiet Light looking to buy, right? Joe: Right. Paul: And some people I felt like wow I could just hand this to them and they could run with it immediately and do like as good or better a job with this than I ever could. And others are like hey I really like this person and their heart is in the right place but I feel like the transition might take a little bit longer and then what if somewhere they dropped the ball and things get sideways like I don't want that somehow to come back to me. I don't know if that's a rational way to think about it but if there was a lot of comfort like feeling this guy or these guys I feel like really got it, they get it, they know what to do, they will hit the ground running from day one so to me that mattered a whole lot. Joe: Yeah. And I think given the fact that we're in this remote world where your buyers and sellers are all over the world literally sometimes doing a video conference call for that initial call breaks the ice. You're not reading the client interview anymore, you're not just talking to somebody on the phone; you can see the whites of their eyes and anybody that wants to see Paul we're recording this both on Zoom with video and audio and it will be up on the YouTube page as well. He does not look like a buttoned-up CPA today and I was making fun of him when we first got on the call. You've always looked like that but today you know what you're a successful exitpreneur. You got the sweatshirt on, a little stubble, working from home; I love it. All right so I want to you ask a couple of things just for the audience purposes. Number one back to running the business what was the toughest challenge in running the business? Let's start with that. Go ahead. Paul: Yeah. I'd say even at the start this isn't even a tactical thing but the hardest thing was just getting the momentum going. Starting an Amazon business is not like hey I'm trying to create an electric car and beat Elon Musk but even me like I had a lot of doubts at the start like is this is going to work, am I going to lose all my money? All of these doubts kind of creep into your head so I remember really kind of struggling to pull the trigger in a way thinking like I just don't know is this supposed to be my pathway? So I think that was really hard to overcome and you just kind of keep going one foot in front of the other and once you get a little momentum it just like brings all this energy and life into you that you just feel so energized to just keep improving and add products and make your products better and make the packaging better. Getting that first momentum can feel elusive and challenging so I think that was like a big thing at the start. Joe: And you failed and then you stuck with it and then you succeeded. Paul: Yeah. And I was kind of at an inflection point like should I keep going or is this just not meant to be and then you know. Joe: This may be a dumb question but are you glad you kept going? Paul: I'm very glad. It changed my life that I kept going. I mean I'd still be sitting at a desk in corporate America right now I hadn't kept going and like we've got a three-year-old son at home like the physical time we will spend with him and then mentally my head is so much like the stress is away from me. So I was always stressed working in corporate America so it's been the biggest blessing ever to go out and do this. It's changed my whole family's life. Joe: Okay. So let me ask the question that all buyers ask, why did you sell the business? Paul: Yeah, it was a tough decision to sell because I was having so much fun running it. And I think the honest answer is the value of the business became such that it really could provide a lot of security for our family. And it felt like if I was 23 and single and didn't have kids I'll like alright instead of going for this I might have just keep on going and try to sell it for three times this or five times this or just keep going. But knowing Amazon can be volatile and like I had all my eggs in that basket so it just felt like the responsible thing is to take some chips off the table and let go of the business but it was really hard. Joe: The responsible thing; I like that, the responsible thing. Your CPA background is coming out now. That's good. Paul: Yeah. Joe: All right so what was the toughest part about going through the sales process and selling the business; what was the hardest part there? Paul: Picking a buyer was really tough. Joe: It's a good problem. That's a good problem to have. Paul: I mean just even knowing how to approach it and you really helped a ton Joe in that process. When it's your first time through and you already have kind of these emotions like you built this thing and now it's worth something that people want it, it's a weird feeling and like how to value it and how to find the right fit and thinking about SBA versus cash; there's just a lot of things that are spinning through your head at that time so I think just getting a clear head and trying to identify what the right fit was the toughest part. Joe: Okay. I think you again exception rather than really had 10 offers, I think maybe one or two might have come in slightly under asking price but the vast majority was above. I think 2019 the average offers that we had on any single listening was two and a half so you are five times that amount which is pretty exceptional. That goes to the brand that you built. It goes to the way that you set the business up with its own entity. You didn't come and go books. You're a CPA but you hired a professional bookkeeper. You instilled so much confidence in buyers. They clearly came out of the woodworks to buy your business. All right, the toughest part was choosing the buyer; that's amazing. It's not what I would've guessed you would have said. Sometimes it's due diligence but with you, it was choosing a buyer. All right so now there's life after the sale, you were in the corporate world working 40, 50 hours a week or sometimes more in tax season and then you're an entrepreneur working from home spending time with your son now what are you doing? You've sold the business nine months ago, what are you doing with your time? Paul: Yeah so it's been nice to have a little; in life usually you're just like chasing after the next thing and I've had just the time to step back and think really what I want to do and what I want my life to look like so it's been like a real luxury. So I'm going into; I'm building a website, it's called WealthFam.com. Joe: Fam like family? Okay. Paul: Yup like family. It's brand new but basically it sort of like combines my background and what I like to do. So it's all about building wealth; becoming financially independent, starting and running online businesses. Basically, it's how to be smarter with your money and use the money to help kind of enable the life that you want to live whether it's being with your kids or going on trips or whatever else. So it's a content site which is a super interesting thing. I thought a lot about going back and doing another Amazon business but I just didn't feel the same spark for like starting it and it takes a lot of energy and mental fortitude to take something from A to Z and you've got to really want it kind of every step of the way. So this just kind of really energized me and there's been some great stories like Ramon's story; you featured Ramon. It like blew my mind the… Joe: His content site, yeah. Paul: And that happened in the content space so that was really exciting to me. And on top of that I just like doing this stuff so it feels like the right sort of fit. Joe: So what kind of subjects are you going to cover on Wealth Fam? Paul: So it's broken down a couple of categories like making money, saving money, investing money, financial independence, and then some stuff like how money intersects with having a kid and being married or buying a house. So I'm trying to make it like a modern personal finance site that people in their teens, 20s, 30s, can find well like at least from my experience like education society; like our schools and in general, there's not a lot of like real training about… Joe: There's none of it. There's none of it, yeah. Paul: And there's even a lesson mode like starting an online business and like the potential kind of betting on yourself. Joe: It seems like a great idea because you're taking your educational experience along with your entrepreneurial experience and marrying them together with a content site which is great. I love content sites. We work with SaaS, content, and FBA and content is just fantastic. Scott Voelker is really, really focused on helping people go beyond FBA and build content sites and some of them have great success and its driving more traffic back to FBA and getting their business products sold. For those that aren't familiar with content site monetization, how do you plan to monetize the site? Paul: So there's a couple of traditional ways that people will do it. So, first of all, you have to have traffic. I mean if I have traffic inaudible[00:28:43.3] selling eyeballs like it's tough to; getting traffic is really hard and you're playing like this SEO game and it takes a long time to rank in Google. Then there's a couple of primary ways, the first is affiliate links like you could be selling a course or selling something on Amazon or selling; the Amazon FBA thing is a really interesting thing for Amazon sellers to marry their inaudible[00:29:04.9] business with content. I love that idea. I think that's really smart. There's brand sponsorships, other partnerships; but it's like advertising and affiliate income are kind of the two main plays for monetizing. Joe: I got you, okay. All right how's life at home; what do you do with your time? I mean you've you don't have a job. You're starting a content site which might take a little bit of your time. You've got a baby. Paul: It takes a lot of time. Joe: It takes a lot; the startup phase is always the hardest, isn't it? Paul: Inaudible[00:29:38.4] the thing I underestimated about content is that like writing is really hard. Joe: Yeah. Paul: I think oh I can write something about Amazon, that's easy, I know this. It takes a lot of time to really do a good job at clarifying your thoughts but overall I'm just trying to optimize my life for happiness and contentment and I get that right now being with my son and my wife. So I spend a lot of time with my family. We do a lot of cool stuff together. And I'm really liking; I do some Amazon consulting because I'm still at the Amazon blog and I like to be involved in it so I'm doing some of that for some local companies which I love doing. Joe: Good. Paul: And then this content thing really is exciting and fun and I'm going to see where it can go and… Joe: So you didn't make enough on the sale of your business to never work again but enough to give you a pretty long runway and you're enjoying your expertise in the Amazon space and doing some consulting while you're building up another content or a content business? Paul: Yeah that's a fair way to… Joe: Does that sum it up? Paul: Yeah and I'd like to go up those kind of shift too, right? I'm not sure how in-tune you are with the financial independence world, all the people that want to retire early and be financially… Joe: Oh yeah, fire. Paul: So like if your burn rate or you can live on 40 grand a year once you stacked up a million bucks, in theory, you can quote-unquote retire. Joe: Sure. Paul: But as you think about education and college and healthcare and all these other things that number maybe gets a little bit… Joe: It gets blown out of the water. I have an 18-year-old and we're 14 days away from knowing what he's getting into which is schools and I'm rooting for the in-state schools; I'm not going to lie to you, I'm rooting for the in-state. Paul: Hey, I went to an in-state school and… Joe: Look at how it turned out; pretty damn good. Paul: Yeah. Joe: All right cool. Well, listen Paul I always tell the story about you and your brand and the fact that that fifth pillar makes a huge difference. It's the person behind the business that builds a great business with the next owner in mind. You kind of did that, I don't know if you did it intentionally or not but you said I'm going to build a great business. I want to put it all in a package that's going to help the new owner of the business do amazing things with it. And Matt the new owner of the business as you know is doing amazing things with it. And it pays off when you think about others exactly what you did that paid off for you, it paid off for your family, and now hopefully through Wealth Fam, it's going to pay off for a lot of other visitors to your website as well so people can start young and start smart and get on the right path financially. So listen man thanks for your time. I appreciate the business that you've built because it allows me to tell a story of how the person behind the business makes a tremendous difference so thank you and I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. Paul: You got it. Anytime. Thanks a lot, Joe. Links and Resources: Paul's Website Jungle Scout Helium 10

One year ago we listed a business that created a massive amount of activity, garnering ten offers, many above asking price. As part of our incredible exit series, today we welcome a seller who has had some time to reflect on all the things he did right in his sale and share what he has been up to since. Paul Anderson started his career as an accountant, taking the safe path and spending ten years in corporate America. An increasing lack of passion led him to start to build his own lifeboat. He avidly studied Amazon FBA and learned by following experts in the e-commerce space. Although his first launch failed he carried on, honing his awareness of product opportunities out there and eventually he hit it big. Today Paul delves into the building of the business, the pillars of his success, and the components of his path to becoming an exitpreneur. Episode Highlights: Paul's first product's failure to launch and what he learned. How he sourced the second product and what happened in the last quarter of 2016. Funding subsequent stock and the challenges of inventory planning. How Paul stands on all four pillars of a successfully built business as well as that invisible fifth pillar. The scheduling and nitty gritty of the sale process. How the final buyer was chosen and the deciding factors for Paul. Why the highest bidder does not always win. The toughest challenges of running the business. Why Paul decided to sell. What he has been doing since the sale. Tips for building a successful content website. Transcription: Mark: So almost one year ago to the date of the recording of this episode of the podcast I was on a car ride with Joe; you Joe from where was it? It was from Dallas down to Houston and then Houston back up to Dallas. We were meeting with a good friend of ours that lived in Houston and while we were in that car ride you had launched a new listing that went absolutely berserk. And I've referenced this; I think we've actually talked about this on the podcast a few times, I've referenced this deal because it was one of these outlier deals that seem to check every single box and the result was just a massive amount of requests for phone calls and I believe 10 offers within a very short amount of time. And it's been a year since that launched and obviously, the deal closed which we're super happy about but now you finally get to have the seller on the podcast talking about all the things that he did right. Joe: Yeah it's a great time because it's a year out so he gets to look back. And over the years of doing this podcast the people listening have heard us talk about the four pillars; risk, growth, transferability, and documentation and someone might go yeah ok whatever, the reality is that they matter. Paul Anderson sold his business; 10 offers, he checked off every one of these pillars and the six little subtitles under each pillar and then the fifth one which I know Mark there's no fifth pillar, but the fifth one is the man or person or entrepreneur behind the business. Paul being a former CPA turned entrepreneur who outsourced his bookkeeping to a bookkeeper is just a super likable guy, stay at home dad, buttoned up in so many different ways. The end result is I had to clear his schedule; he basically had three conference calls with highly qualified buyers for five days in a row. He was exhausted from it because each one was… Joe: So you had 15 conference calls then. Paul: 15 conference calls. Joe: And I remember again we were in the car going back up to Dallas and you were on the phone pretty much constantly telling people okay let me see if I can arrange a time for you. So there was a lot more requests for conference calls on this deal. Paul: A lot more requests and we say we had 10 offers but finally a few people dropped out because they just didn't want to compete because they knew what it is going to be. And the funny thing is people get concerned about that and we always say right up front look don't get caught up in the hype of multiple offers, don't go beyond your comfort level, offer-wise. We want you to make an offer that works for you and hopefully will work for the seller as well because we want it to go all the way from letter of intent through to due diligence and that's exactly what we wound up with. And oddly enough Paul did not choose as we always say they don't necessarily choose the highest price. He didn't do that. He picked the offer that was best for him and I think it was somewhere $150,000 lower than the highest price. So we talked about a little bit of that process, what makes a good seller, a good buyer, and then we talked about what he's doing today which is really interesting as well so hopefully, everybody will enjoy this podcast. Joe: Absolutely. Paul: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey folks. Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast and today I have an Incredible Exits client on the phone with me. It's Paul Anderson. We sold Paul's business I think; when was it, Paul? Paul: March of last year, so a little under a year ago. Joe: Spring of 2019; so a little under a year ago. So we're going to talk about Paul's exit. We're going to talk about what Paul went through when he built the business, sold the business after he sold the business, and what he's doing now so we're going to get the full picture. Paul welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Paul: Thanks Joe, good to be here. Good to talk to you. Joe: So for the folks listening why don't you give a little bit of background on your professional pedigree and your entrepreneurial journey? Paul: Yeah, sure. So I actually studied accounting and followed that path. I was kind of one of those people that never really knew what I wanted to do. Like some people I think they're just like hey I want to be a TV news reporter or a journalist, I never really had that strong thing tapped me on the shoulder that said this is what you should do so I took a pretty safe practical path. I went into accounting and got my CPA. I spent about 10 years working in corporate America doing accounting and finance jobs and didn't really ever feel like that passion and eventually it started to kind of wear me down. I got to the point where I had to think of something else to do and try to build my own little lifeboat to escape from that because something inside me just didn't feel right anymore doing that. So that's kind of what led into starting a business. So that's in 2016. Somewhere; I don't even remember where I started to hear about Amazon FBA and I kind of consumed everything I could about it like podcasts, there's this guy Manny Coats inaudible[00:06:09.6] Helium10, he had a great podcast back then, Amazing Seller; there's all sorts of good stuff online about the model and that's kind of how it started and I started really small. We can get into it from there but that was kind of the first step, learning about it and seeing like oh I think I could do this. Joe: So you learned about it from podcasts; you didn't pay for a course or anything like that, you were absorbing free information from experts in the space. Paul: I never bought a single course it was all podcasts, Facebook groups, Reddit forums, and I was just… Joe: I love it. Paul: Yeah I can tell you about the first launch which was a total fail but that was like my training course like the very first launch because I learned. Joe: Failure is a great lesson. How much money did you pull together to launch the business and were you working at that point in the CPA business? Paul: Yeah I was still working. It was 2016, I put $5,000 in to do; most of it was an inventory buy so I was on Alibaba like at night trying to find my suppliers talking with China and I put in probably about 5,000 bucks to start on my first product. Joe: Okay. And you just mentioned Helium10; did you use Helium10 to help you find that first product? Paul: Yes. So it's funny like almost all the products I launched I've kind of like encountered in the real world somewhere and the product that turned out to be my big business was I kind of got onto it from a discussion with my parents. We're just having a casual discussion like you would have many times a day and they mentioned this particular thing and I would always in my iPhone put down; anything that seemed interesting I would just like log it in there and then I come back to it. So I had a list of 20 to 30 things going and I went back and started doing some research. I actually was using Jungle Scout back then and I switched over to Helium10 for everything now. Joe: Oh they're both great products; both of them. Manny and Greg have both been on the podcast; great guys. Paul: Yeah, for sure. So I kind of punched it in there and said like oh this looks like; the numbers look good and that's kind of how it started but it really was that conversation being like; I think if there's a lesson there it's being aware, we have so many kinds of filters and blinders on like if you really put yourself in the headspace of looking for opportunities you'd be surprised how many little things you read online or you hear about through friends like this is really popular; there's just all sorts of those little things that pop up that could turn out to be big businesses. Joe: So pay attention to your surroundings; the stuff that you use every day, emerging products in categories and niches and try to pay attention to and think is there an opportunity? Did you use any tools to see if a lot of people were selling in that particular category and that particular product? Paul: I mean Jungle Scout helps with that but mainly you can just go on and kind of assess like if page one everyone's got a thousand reviews and they're really well-known brands or something that's probably going to be a tough place to break into. Joe: Tough barrier; okay. So tell us about your first test, it was an epic fail? Paul: Yeah, so I was really pumped and thought like here it is, this is going to be like my ticket out of full-time work and it's going to be amazing and it was actually an accessory. Have you ever heard of pour-over coffee? Joe: Yeah. Paul: So that was kind of just bubbling up, seeming like oh this is really a trending product… Joe: Too much work; I never bought it because… Paul: Too much work, yeah, but there's a lot of people that are really into the craft obviously a coffee one and having some artisan experience. So I sourced these little wooden coffee stands that's basically used to make pour-over coffee. And it was kind of a cool thing but it turns out products made out of wood can crack and can break and have issues and I was not an expert at sourcing at that point in time so the long story short a lot of the products ended up cracking and breaking. And then once you start getting all these one-star reviews and returns; like my garage was full all around with carts of returned inventory and there wasn't that much demand I think. At the start, I was thinking oh you really got a niche down into this little tiny space and own that and there just wasn't quite enough demand in that space either. So I kind of learned to be a little smarter on sourcing and just to look for ways that things can go wrong inaudible[00:10:31.6] thing that's just so niche that like even if you execute and everything is great like you're going to be selling a couple of units a day. Joe: So how much money did you test and lose on that first product launch? Paul: So that was about 5,000 bucks in and I didn't take to bad a bee but I think I lost about a thousand dollars on it which isn't bad. Joe: Oh that's not bad. Paul: Yeah. Joe: Not enough to make you go away and say okay this didn't work I'm done; I'm going to go back to the corporate world. You got a taste for it and you said okay I just picked the wrong product. Paul: Exactly. And I mean I was still in the corporate world and like 5,000 bucks it's not like a lot of money at the time so it wasn't like I was; I'm like yeah whatever it doesn't matter. At that point, the stakes felt real and high. Joe: Yeah. Paul: Because it definitely was like I can see the power here on Amazon it's just like finding the right thing to really get this thing spinning. Joe: Okay. So you learned a lesson; you only lost 20% of your money but you get an excellent education from it better than any course you could have ever purchased. You went out there tried it, failed, learned, and didn't lose so much that you couldn't do it again. So you came up with another product niche and decided to go at it again? Paul: Exactly yes. So then I was actually going over to; are you familiar with the Canton Fair which is the big supplier…? Joe: Yeah. Paul: So I had a trip booked to go over there and kind of in-between going there… Joe: Just out of curiosity did you book it with a group or was it just you? Paul: Just me and my wife went over. Joe: Oh okay, because I was just talking to Athena from China Magic and they have a group of folks that go on a regular basis for those that are terrified to go alone. So you and your wife chose to book a flight to China and go to the Canton Fair alone. Paul: I loved it. It was really, really full out and I'm eager to go over there. Joe: Okay. Paul: I actually ended up finding my supplier on Alibaba before I went so I can't really say that the trip necessarily paid off in terms of like… Joe: Did you connect with him in person when you got to the Canton Fair? Paul: No because it was still too early and he was pretty far away from the Canton Fair. I think it helped me really see kind of like the culture of China and doing business with China and I think just a little savvier about how things work. So it was a great education for that and just like a lot of fun to check it out; I mean the place is just massive, like multiple football fields. Anything you want to ever source it would be out there so it was a super interesting spot. But anyway back to your second question so yes I stumbled upon this other product and started kind of the wheels turning in 2016 to source it. I got it on I think in the fall of 2016 and I remember that Q4 for Amazon or e-commerce is like the prime time and I remember just refreshing that seller app that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like all through up until Christmas and it was just mind-blowing the sales that were coming in off this new product. Joe: What was it like your first day that you got a sale, how many sales did you have all together; do you remember? Paul: Oh I mean it started slow. The first thing was probably just two or three units. I mean it's really; it was in such a momentum game like when you have no momentum it's hard to keep momentum and then once you get this momentum going and the wheels start spinning it can blow your mind like the amount of sales that… Joe: And that actually blew our mind within the first month or in that first quarter like what did you wind up with on the biggest day within a couple of months of launching it in the Q4 of ‘16? Paul: I don't want to say maybe like $8,000 of sales there. Joe: Oh, wow. Paul: Something big like and then when you look at the profits from that it's like wow I made more money like on this one day than; and I had a pretty decent corporate job, I'm like this is crazy like the potential. So the hooks kind of got in me right there and then '16 was kind of just getting off the ground and then the next year is when the ball really started to roll. Joe: When you started to get revenue in the fourth quarter of 2016 and sales started to come in you had euphoria with the fact that you were getting that kind of revenue and making more money in one day than you made perhaps in a month in the corporate world but did you also have the fear of oh my God I'm going to run out of inventory? Paul: I did. Joe: Okay. Paul: Yeah, inventory is like not something glamorous to talk about and you don't really hear about it that much in podcasts or anything else but it's like running a physical products company doing an Amazon business like the inventory planning is so difficult because your sales can change on a dime. inaudible[00:15:20.7] your supplier 30 days early to make something and another 30 days to put them on a ship to get it over here. So you've got these difficult variables to manage that can leave you stocked out or even a little bit too much stuck so that's always a tough thing to manage. Joe: Awesome. I don't think I've ever met an Amazon seller or an e-commerce business person that's been growing rapidly that's not run out of inventory at one point or another. All right, so you started with $5,000, did a test, failed, how long between the first failed test and the second product that took off; how many months was it? Paul: That was about three months I think. Joe: Okay, and all the time you kept your day job which is fantastic. So you've got some revenue, you've got some money in the account that's transferred to your business account, at what point did you order more inventory with and did you just use that money or did you sit down and talk as a family and say okay this is a winner we need to take a home equity line of credit; how did you fund the rest of the inventory purchases? Paul: It was all really funded with profits. Joe: It was? Okay. Paul: Yeah, it was. Joe: And you didn't have to take any money out for living expenses because you had your day job so that's perfect. Paul: Yeah. If I wouldn't have my day job it would have made it much more difficult but luckily I had some steady income coming in on the day job and then I was able to just take the profits and reinvest them back in and just go from there. Joe: Fast forwarding you had an amazing 2017, an amazing 2018; strong year over year growth, like huge year over year growth. For those listening, Paul's business was listed again spring of 2019 and it's those perfect situation folks where we talk about the four pillars of a sellable business and that invisible fifth one which is the person behind the business and that's Paul. We have a 30-month-old Amazon business with an incredible brand that's growing rapidly year over year. The financials we're set up impeccably. Paul is a CPA but he did something incredible which was what? You outsourced the books to an e-commerce bookkeeper; brilliant by the way. So those of you that are out there saying oh I can do this I'm not going to pay a few hundred bucks to a bookkeeper we've got a CPA here that chose to outsource to an e-commerce bookkeeper because he can do better things than bookkeeping with his time like grow a multi-million dollar Amazon brand which is exactly what you did. Your business checks so many boxes. It was SBA eligible. You were the owner behind the business. You built trust. People believed in you. During the recorded video interview, you're the first person; and I keep asking people to do it now, you're the first person that ever sat in front of the camera, reached down picked up the product and demonstrated the product. You showed the new packaging that you had just done. It was beautiful and the end result was an overwhelming request to buy the business, conference calls where you had to clear your schedule for a week. I said Paul cancel everything, right? We had to clear it and we ended up with I think three calls with qualified buyers every day for five days. We wound up with 10 total offers. I think we were at; the top one was something like $150,000 over asking price. Paul: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, and we say this all the time that it's not always the offer that comes in with the highest number, it's the right fit more than anything else. We had; of the 10 offers, I think we had maybe six that were SBA and four that were cash. You ended up choosing a cash buyer and not just because it was a cash buyer but also the person behind the business. We did video interviews between the buyer and seller. How much did that matter and how much of a difference did that make for you? Paul: The interviews mattered a ton. I mean that was the deciding factor because when I went into the process I just thought like well it's pretty simple, right? You take the highest number and the highest bidder wins but as you get into it and talk to different people it's like a huge diverse set of backgrounds that people are coming through Quiet Light looking to buy, right? Joe: Right. Paul: And some people I felt like wow I could just hand this to them and they could run with it immediately and do like as good or better a job with this than I ever could. And others are like hey I really like this person and their heart is in the right place but I feel like the transition might take a little bit longer and then what if somewhere they dropped the ball and things get sideways like I don't want that somehow to come back to me. I don't know if that's a rational way to think about it but if there was a lot of comfort like feeling this guy or these guys I feel like really got it, they get it, they know what to do, they will hit the ground running from day one so to me that mattered a whole lot. Joe: Yeah. And I think given the fact that we're in this remote world where your buyers and sellers are all over the world literally sometimes doing a video conference call for that initial call breaks the ice. You're not reading the client interview anymore, you're not just talking to somebody on the phone; you can see the whites of their eyes and anybody that wants to see Paul we're recording this both on Zoom with video and audio and it will be up on the YouTube page as well. He does not look like a buttoned-up CPA today and I was making fun of him when we first got on the call. You've always looked like that but today you know what you're a successful exitpreneur. You got the sweatshirt on, a little stubble, working from home; I love it. All right so I want to you ask a couple of things just for the audience purposes. Number one back to running the business what was the toughest challenge in running the business? Let's start with that. Go ahead. Paul: Yeah. I'd say even at the start this isn't even a tactical thing but the hardest thing was just getting the momentum going. Starting an Amazon business is not like hey I'm trying to create an electric car and beat Elon Musk but even me like I had a lot of doubts at the start like is this is going to work, am I going to lose all my money? All of these doubts kind of creep into your head so I remember really kind of struggling to pull the trigger in a way thinking like I just don't know is this supposed to be my pathway? So I think that was really hard to overcome and you just kind of keep going one foot in front of the other and once you get a little momentum it just like brings all this energy and life into you that you just feel so energized to just keep improving and add products and make your products better and make the packaging better. Getting that first momentum can feel elusive and challenging so I think that was like a big thing at the start. Joe: And you failed and then you stuck with it and then you succeeded. Paul: Yeah. And I was kind of at an inflection point like should I keep going or is this just not meant to be and then you know. Joe: This may be a dumb question but are you glad you kept going? Paul: I'm very glad. It changed my life that I kept going. I mean I'd still be sitting at a desk in corporate America right now I hadn't kept going and like we've got a three-year-old son at home like the physical time we will spend with him and then mentally my head is so much like the stress is away from me. So I was always stressed working in corporate America so it's been the biggest blessing ever to go out and do this. It's changed my whole family's life. Joe: Okay. So let me ask the question that all buyers ask, why did you sell the business? Paul: Yeah, it was a tough decision to sell because I was having so much fun running it. And I think the honest answer is the value of the business became such that it really could provide a lot of security for our family. And it felt like if I was 23 and single and didn't have kids I'll like alright instead of going for this I might have just keep on going and try to sell it for three times this or five times this or just keep going. But knowing Amazon can be volatile and like I had all my eggs in that basket so it just felt like the responsible thing is to take some chips off the table and let go of the business but it was really hard. Joe: The responsible thing; I like that, the responsible thing. Your CPA background is coming out now. That's good. Paul: Yeah. Joe: All right so what was the toughest part about going through the sales process and selling the business; what was the hardest part there? Paul: Picking a buyer was really tough. Joe: It's a good problem. That's a good problem to have. Paul: I mean just even knowing how to approach it and you really helped a ton Joe in that process. When it's your first time through and you already have kind of these emotions like you built this thing and now it's worth something that people want it, it's a weird feeling and like how to value it and how to find the right fit and thinking about SBA versus cash; there's just a lot of things that are spinning through your head at that time so I think just getting a clear head and trying to identify what the right fit was the toughest part. Joe: Okay. I think you again exception rather than really had 10 offers, I think maybe one or two might have come in slightly under asking price but the vast majority was above. I think 2019 the average offers that we had on any single listening was two and a half so you are five times that amount which is pretty exceptional. That goes to the brand that you built. It goes to the way that you set the business up with its own entity. You didn't come and go books. You're a CPA but you hired a professional bookkeeper. You instilled so much confidence in buyers. They clearly came out of the woodworks to buy your business. All right, the toughest part was choosing the buyer; that's amazing. It's not what I would've guessed you would have said. Sometimes it's due diligence but with you, it was choosing a buyer. All right so now there's life after the sale, you were in the corporate world working 40, 50 hours a week or sometimes more in tax season and then you're an entrepreneur working from home spending time with your son now what are you doing? You've sold the business nine months ago, what are you doing with your time? Paul: Yeah so it's been nice to have a little; in life usually you're just like chasing after the next thing and I've had just the time to step back and think really what I want to do and what I want my life to look like so it's been like a real luxury. So I'm going into; I'm building a website, it's called WealthFam.com. Joe: Fam like family? Okay. Paul: Yup like family. It's brand new but basically it sort of like combines my background and what I like to do. So it's all about building wealth; becoming financially independent, starting and running online businesses. Basically, it's how to be smarter with your money and use the money to help kind of enable the life that you want to live whether it's being with your kids or going on trips or whatever else. So it's a content site which is a super interesting thing. I thought a lot about going back and doing another Amazon business but I just didn't feel the same spark for like starting it and it takes a lot of energy and mental fortitude to take something from A to Z and you've got to really want it kind of every step of the way. So this just kind of really energized me and there's been some great stories like Ramon's story; you featured Ramon. It like blew my mind the… Joe: His content site, yeah. Paul: And that happened in the content space so that was really exciting to me. And on top of that I just like doing this stuff so it feels like the right sort of fit. Joe: So what kind of subjects are you going to cover on Wealth Fam? Paul: So it's broken down a couple of categories like making money, saving money, investing money, financial independence, and then some stuff like how money intersects with having a kid and being married or buying a house. So I'm trying to make it like a modern personal finance site that people in their teens, 20s, 30s, can find well like at least from my experience like education society; like our schools and in general, there's not a lot of like real training about… Joe: There's none of it. There's none of it, yeah. Paul: And there's even a lesson mode like starting an online business and like the potential kind of betting on yourself. Joe: It seems like a great idea because you're taking your educational experience along with your entrepreneurial experience and marrying them together with a content site which is great. I love content sites. We work with SaaS, content, and FBA and content is just fantastic. Scott Voelker is really, really focused on helping people go beyond FBA and build content sites and some of them have great success and its driving more traffic back to FBA and getting their business products sold. For those that aren't familiar with content site monetization, how do you plan to monetize the site? Paul: So there's a couple of traditional ways that people will do it. So, first of all, you have to have traffic. I mean if I have traffic inaudible[00:28:43.3] selling eyeballs like it's tough to; getting traffic is really hard and you're playing like this SEO game and it takes a long time to rank in Google. Then there's a couple of primary ways, the first is affiliate links like you could be selling a course or selling something on Amazon or selling; the Amazon FBA thing is a really interesting thing for Amazon sellers to marry their inaudible[00:29:04.9] business with content. I love that idea. I think that's really smart. There's brand sponsorships, other partnerships; but it's like advertising and affiliate income are kind of the two main plays for monetizing. Joe: I got you, okay. All right how's life at home; what do you do with your time? I mean you've you don't have a job. You're starting a content site which might take a little bit of your time. You've got a baby. Paul: It takes a lot of time. Joe: It takes a lot; the startup phase is always the hardest, isn't it? Paul: Inaudible[00:29:38.4] the thing I underestimated about content is that like writing is really hard. Joe: Yeah. Paul: I think oh I can write something about Amazon, that's easy, I know this. It takes a lot of time to really do a good job at clarifying your thoughts but overall I'm just trying to optimize my life for happiness and contentment and I get that right now being with my son and my wife. So I spend a lot of time with my family. We do a lot of cool stuff together. And I'm really liking; I do some Amazon consulting because I'm still at the Amazon blog and I like to be involved in it so I'm doing some of that for some local companies which I love doing.   Joe: Good. Paul: And then this content thing really is exciting and fun and I'm going to see where it can go and… Joe: So you didn't make enough on the sale of your business to never work again but enough to give you a pretty long runway and you're enjoying your expertise in the Amazon space and doing some consulting while you're building up another content or a content business? Paul: Yeah that's a fair way to… Joe: Does that sum it up? Paul: Yeah and I'd like to go up those kind of shift too, right? I'm not sure how in-tune you are with the financial independence world, all the people that want to retire early and be financially… Joe: Oh yeah, fire. Paul: So like if your burn rate or you can live on 40 grand a year once you stacked up a million bucks, in theory, you can quote-unquote retire. Joe: Sure. Paul: But as you think about education and college and healthcare and all these other things that number maybe gets a little bit… Joe: It gets blown out of the water. I have an 18-year-old and we're 14 days away from knowing what he's getting into which is schools and I'm rooting for the in-state schools; I'm not going to lie to you, I'm rooting for the in-state. Paul: Hey, I went to an in-state school and… Joe: Look at how it turned out; pretty damn good. Paul: Yeah. Joe: All right cool. Well, listen Paul I always tell the story about you and your brand and the fact that that fifth pillar makes a huge difference. It's the person behind the business that builds a great business with the next owner in mind. You kind of did that, I don't know if you did it intentionally or not but you said I'm going to build a great business. I want to put it all in a package that's going to help the new owner of the business do amazing things with it. And Matt the new owner of the business as you know is doing amazing things with it. And it pays off when you think about others exactly what you did that paid off for you, it paid off for your family, and now hopefully through Wealth Fam, it's going to pay off for a lot of other visitors to your website as well so people can start young and start smart and get on the right path financially. So listen man thanks for your time. I appreciate the business that you've built because it allows me to tell a story of how the person behind the business makes a tremendous difference so thank you and I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. Paul: You got it. Anytime. Thanks a lot, Joe. Links and Resources: Paul's Website Jungle Scout Helium 10

Scott Voelker is back on the Become a Media Maven podcast to talk about how people can finally take action on a business idea, even if they’re scared. In his book, The Take Action Effect, he talks about the many businesses he started and how his mindset and hard work played a big part in his success. Scott talks about the safety nets he hung to fall back on while he carved out time to work on his side hustles. These five steps will get you started: 1. Side hustle. 2. Start small and work your way up. 3. Use your unique assets. 4. Having the focus and the direction to hit your goal. Pick something, go, AND COMMIT FOR 8-12 MONTHS! 5. Don’t build something, then validate it. Instead, validate it, then build it. Also, invest in a coach or mentor to take action to see results faster.

Today our guest is a big name in the Amazon space. Scott Voelker is not only an incredible Amazon seller, but he is also a fantastic mentor to others in the space. His podcast, The Amazing Seller, offers Amazon sellers invaluable support and insights and today we are picking his brain about his background and […] The post Episode 32: How To Build A Brand, Leverage Outside Traffic & Crush It On Amazon! with Scott Voelker appeared first on TurnKey Product Management - Podcast.

In a world where so many businesses are competing for attention, you must create a connection with customers to stand out. You may offer a similar product or service, but what you do to brand yourself and connect will make a difference. This episode is all about connection, marketing, and how to stand out from the crowd. Chris Shaffer—an expert in customer relationships and branding—joins Kevin in this episode of Maximizing Ecommerce. They worked closely together to put on Brand Accelerator Live with Scott Voelker. He’s an absolute whiz in ecommerce and here to share his expertise. Don’t miss this episode!  Outline of This Episode [2:55] Cultivating relationships with customers [4:50] Kevin introduces Chris Shaffer [5:55] Background in Ecommerce [11:55] Baseline Budgeting [13:30] Strategy and optimization [15:35] How to start building a list [17:30] Learn your target market [20:20] Facebook has a group for everything [24:30] Content - how do you pick where to start? [26:50] The power of Facebook groups [34:00] Market, message, match. [42:20] Learn how to communicate with your list [51:30] How to track how your emails are performing [57:20] How to connect with Chris If someone wrote you a blank check, what would you do?  If you were offered unlimited resources to grow your business, what would you do? Chris points out that it can be fun and allows you to be creative with marketing. You can experiment without the fear of an idea failing. In reality most of use don’t have an open-ended budget, but what if you attempted to innovate as if you did?  Many companies follow a strategy labeled “baseline budgeting”. In simplistic terms, if they don’t spend their complete marketing budget they run the risk of being stuck with a lower budget for the upcoming year. This drives the marketing team to spend money wastefully—and why you’ll often see CPC driven upwards towards the end of the year.  They’re spending upwards of $10,000 a month when they could get the job done with $6,000. Chris believes this type of budgeting system needs to be phased out. It penalizes a team for doing great work on a lower budget. Chris and Kevin continue to talk strategy and figuring out your target market, so keep listening.  Offer value where your audience lives If you understand your target market, you need to begin to learn where they “live”. Is your customer on Facebook? YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest? Start where others in your market have found success. Once you build an audience, you can transfer it to any platform you prefer. Scott Voelker and Chris met because they had booth joined ecommerce Facebook groups and were answering questions. They quickly became the go-to experts in the group because they offered value. It was one of the catalysts that led to the success of the Amazing Seller podcast.  They were involved in the community and leading with value. When the podcast was launched, a linked was dropped in the Facebook group. It took off. People in the group downloaded the podcast, and chatter about it spread to other Facebook groups. What could you do to boost your business if you simply placed the needs of your customers first?  Market. Message. Match. List-building is a strategy that everyone everywhere recommends, and for good reason. It allows you to directly market to people who want to hear from you. It pulls traffic to your website. But how do you get people on your list? According to Chris, one of the easiest things you can do—and the hardest to mess up—is a product giveaway. Don’t do something crazy like an iPad. Everyone wants one and you won’t convert true followers. You’ll end up with a lot of people who hit “unsubscribe” after the getaway.  Instead, offer a package that plays off of your target market and meshes with your product. Chris’s favorite way to do this is to offer a “newbie” giveaway and an “expert” giveaway. It speaks to both sides of the spectrum of customers. Whatever you do, make sure to always remember: does the product you're offering match the market you’re offering it to? Chris summarizes the principle as “market, message, match”.  A connection with customers can’t be an algorithm Chris points out that your #1 competitor is a nameless and faceless brand on Amazon. Email marketing can be one of the easiest ways to cultivate a connection and relationship with customers. That connection allows you to transcend the platform—and separates you from the lowest priced offer on Amazon. How do you create that connection? Treat them like your friends.  Make your emails conversational. Treat people like people, not an algorithm that you’re trying to figure out. Allow people to learn to hear your voice in your writing. The way you read a message from a friend is a different, deeper connection. It’s not always about the call-to-action. Start by piquing their interest, offering something of value, and building the relationship.  Chris and Kevin talk about how to incorporate a call-to-action, how often to include one in your emails, and how to track how they’re performing. If you’re looking to connect with your customer on a deeper level and ready to build a loyal following for your brand, this is a can’t-miss episode! Resources & People Mentioned The Amazing Seller Podcast The GaryVee Audio Experience The Amazing Seller on YouTube Connect with Chris Shaffer The Amazing Seller Facebook Group Connect With Kevin Sanderson www.YouTube.com/maximizingecommerce www.Facebook.com/maximizingecommerce www.Twitter.com/maxecom Subscribe to Maximizing Ecommerce onApple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM

Today I’m thrilled to have my buddy Scott Voelker back on the show. Scott was my partner in crime for the 5 Minute Pitch and I recently spoke at his conference at Brand Accelerator Live. As entrepreneurs, our biggest problem often lies in our own heads. In this episode, Scott and I break down the Take Action Effect, how to overcome your excuses and make progress with your business. Be sure to check out his new book! What You’ll Learn Key takeaways from Brand Accelerator Live Why Scott decided to write a book about the Take Action Effect How to […] The post 281: Scott Voelker On How To Get Out Of Your Own Head And Take Action appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

Scott Voelker, the amazing seller himself, is back on the podcast today with a new book that will guide entrepreneurs on a path to financial freedom. Scott has transformed from someone who dabbled in e-commerce into a seven figure business owner, author, and host of one of the most popular e-commerce podcasts out there. Now he is sharing his tips with other entrepreneurs, offering sets of specific steps to follow to create a business that will allow freedom and flexibility. From the construction career he left at an early age to starting and building a successful photography business, Scott has built on his entrepreneurial nature for over two decades. In 2008 he started selling photography products online and soon realized it could become a full time income. Fast forward a few more years and he started to hear more about Amazon FBA model and how some people were making good money using the platform. He started researching and listening to any valuable information he could garner then used all the know-how he'd gathered and applied it to his product listings. Episode Highlights: How Scott and his wife got their start building a business from the ground up. Scott discusses the path he took and how the book delves into his future plans. Whether he finds the pathway to the end goal more difficult than five to ten years ago. How Scott is evolving from being "The Amazon Guy." Helping others with the book and the action steps he outlines. Scott addresses the question of finding time to start a side hustle. Learning how to schedule downtime once success allows for less work time. Tips for finding that future-proof opportunity. Taking the affiliate marketing path as an opportunity to learn your market. Using channel diversification as a building block. Transcription: Mark: Joe recently I sent you a book through Amazon that I was hoping you would read and I'm assuming that's the next book on your reading list, right? Joe: No. Sorry. Mark: I'm not going to buy you any more gifts. Joe: No. Now you sent it to me via Amazon and I think I have to download it onto my Kindle app. Mark: You haven't even downloaded it? Joe: I haven't even downloaded it. Mark: Oh my goodness. Joe: You're just trying me. See the reason I haven't is because it's a productivity book and you're trying to get me to be more productive but I haven't read it yet so I'm not as productive as I could be. Do you see an excuse thing going on here? Mark: Productivity is one of those things that I'm sure everybody's like Joe is terrible at getting stuff done. Joe: This book I'm holding out for those that are on the YouTube channel. Thank you for being on the YouTube channel, by the way, you're awesome. This is the book I'm currently reading it's called the Take Action effect By Scott Voelker; a friend of ours and we just had him on the podcast. And that's what the book is all about. It's a combination of, and this is why I'm not reading the book you sent me. And I have one more in front of that by the way but this one is amazing it's really telling Scott's story. Scott as lot of people know has a podcast called The Amazing Seller podcast. With the audience he has every month he could fill up the Bank of America Stadium here in Charlotte and I think that's like 25, 30,000 people. He started out just telling his story building an Amazon business and everything he was going through. He just laid it all out on the line. He's really transferred himself or transformed himself into someone that is first and foremost helping people take action in their lives and he talks about this in the book and how he did certain things in his life and what an impact it had and what it led to next and next and next and now where he's at running a 7 figure business with the lifestyle that he wants. It's still one of the most important things about Scott and the book and the action steps that he shows people how to take is to run a business, set your own goals, how to set goals properly with vision boards and different things but with a lifestyle that you want. This is not a get rich quick scheme it's a book to build the life that you want; how to take certain steps and actions and if you want to run a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollar business great. These will help and there are some examples of that; of people that are doing that. But if you want to just earn an extra couple of thousand dollars on the side and build the business slowly there are absolutely some steps in there for those folks as well; people that are listening now that still have full time jobs that don't dare buy a business this allows them to take certain steps and actions to do that and build a safe business that's going to be relatively passive that they could do part-time as they build that up and eventually quit your day job work and sell it through Quiet Light. Mark: One of the things I like about this is the idea of having a purpose to what you're doing. And I think there is this tendency to chase success, chase success, chase success, and we put in our minds that success is a certain business goal while we ignore the other aspects of our life. And I know over the past 13 years running Quiet Light Brokerage I've run across so many successful entrepreneurs who have built amazing businesses but frankly are somewhat miserable because they've built prisons for themselves. And we talk about why are people selling. Sometimes it's just because they've built that prison of a business and they need to get out. And they realize that they need to readjust their life priorities. I love when we meet people like Scott, like Ezra Firestone, and some of these other guys that have reached certain levels of success and now what they're doing is they're really trying to just be helpful and really contribute to that entrepreneurial community with some of the lessons they've learned. And I love the focus of this book. I love that it's a system out there to help you identify what's really important and have everything else flow into that, set the real goals out there and build that system including the business that fits those goals. Joe: And it's just that Scott is a real guy giving real-life examples of things that he's done and the path that he's taken and he's giving real advice here that is action-oriented. And it's a mindset. It's inspiration. And they're steps to take as well. It's one of the best books I've read in 2019. I highly recommend everybody take a listen to the podcast and at the end and in the show notes here you can go to take action effect and download or buy the book. It's available. He went further than our very own Walker Deibel, he made it available in the audio version as well. Mark: Walker needs to step his game up and start a recording. No. Fantastic. Let's get to this episode here. I love introducing our audience to people that we find to be good friends of Quiet Light because they share some of our mission and purpose. So I'm excited to share this episode with everybody. Joe: Let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast and today I have a guest that is back on. But this time he is a published author on his way I'm sure to being a best-selling author. Scott Volker, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Scott: What's going on Joe? Thanks so much for having me. Joe: Welcome back I should say. I just saw you a couple of weeks ago at Brand Accelerator Live; a fantastic event where you launched the book, a big hit and my goodness I'm looking at some of the reviews and they're fantastic. And I'm reading it myself of course. And let's get into that but first for those folks that don't actually know who you are why don't you tell us all about Scott Voelker? Scott: Yeah. Well to kind of sum it up I've been at this basically creating businesses that allow me to have the flexibility, the freedom, that's always my first and foremost. Back when I was like 21 years old I was working for my father's construction company and from there I thought I was going to own that company one day and then that partnership and son in law that was stealing and some craziness I soon saw that that wasn't the path that I was going to take. But I wanted to still be able to work for myself and my wife and I started a photography business, learned the ropes through good old trial and error, and built that into a business that allowed us to take our kids to school and home from school and all of that stuff. And it's really important me to watch my kids grow up and I've got 3 kids ages now 11, 21, and 24. But I've been at this for over 18 years and really building businesses hasn't really changed just the platforms have changed. And so when I wrote this book I wanted to go through and tell the story of myself. Someone that didn't have a college degree and felt a long time ago that I kind of felt to myself like I wasn't smart because I didn't go to college. But then after kind of building some businesses and watching other people go to their 60 plus hour a week job and then seeing myself not have to do that I was like well wait a minute I'm going to give myself a little bit more credit. I've done okay. And so it in a nutshell that's what I do. I just love building businesses. But I like more about just building a business it's more about the freedom and the flexibility, stability and all that stuff. Joe: And that is what you talk about in the book. Let me just; I don't think I said what the name of the book is. It's called The Take Action Effect. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Proven Steps To Build a Future Proof Business And Create Your Ultimate Freedom. I'll hold it up here for those folks that are on the podcast; I'm sorry on the YouTube channel. Scott: Yeah. Joe: One of the things that you talk about in the book really hit home with me and that is that your wife had that first idea for you to go off and on your own. Scott: Yeah. Joe: And it's and it's continued in your relationship. You guys work through all of your business opportunities and ideas together, right? Scott: Yeah, 100%. I mean she was my take action moment as I talk about in the book a lot. I think we all have these moments in our life that something happens; like a decision happens that we make either because we're forced to and then we see the result from it or we choose to, we take that leap. And I was frustrated with my job and I thought I was going to own this company and then found out that it wasn't going to probably happen and we needed to figure out another way. And then that's when my wife had said maybe we should start a photography business which at the time we didn't have digital it was all film based not YouTube videos to go out there and educate yourself. So Scott that wasn't a good student in school had to figure out how to go through and teach myself Photoshop and just how to run a studio and we did that. But yes she was the one with the idea and still to this day she's always the one kind of nudging me a little bit and saying like you should probably listen to this. Even the podcast The Amazing Seller Podcast that was because she said that you should; I had the idea but she was likey should probably lean into that a little bit and here we are. Joe: That's funny you know my wife usually has the idea and then I have to go out and do it. It's a running joke in 20 plus years of marriage. I was going to I think our wives are very similar. Our marriages are very similar but it sounds like there's one distinct difference is that my wife comes up with the idea and I have to execute. So you're taking a lot of past so it's interesting from a construction worker to entrepreneur in the photography space before really the online world existed and then discovering it through eBay and then Amazon and then The Amazing Seller podcast. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Can you just talk about that path a little bit and talk about what the Part 2 of this business about this book talks about? Scott: Yeah. So like I said the photography business being brick and mortar I learned a lot about how to get clients in the door. And a lot of people say like Scott when you start a business should it be your passion. And if it could be then yes that would be amazing because then you would love to work on it every day. But I wasn't passionate about photography. I was passionate about getting out of my job. So my wife was passionate about photography but then I started to develop these passions and that was marketing and that was Photoshop and video editing. And the way that it kind of led me to really the online space and e-commerce really was my wife was looking for props on eBay. So in our business, we always were unique in the way that we had props. We had certain sets and we had like a lot of backgrounds that cost us 2 or $3,000 and people would pay just to come in because we had this hand-painted backdrop. So my wife was looking for this cedar bridge that she had seen somewhere else and she found one on eBay. It was like 130 bucks it was a little 4-foot little wooden cedar bridge. And so then as she was looking at one of the other stores that she shops at she's seen the same bridge for 30 bucks and she's like it's selling for 130. I bought one for 130 maybe we should try to sell this thing. I said okay. So then that's where we got the idea and we started selling those. Actually, we took the minivan over to the store and we loaded it up and we packed that thing and that money actually paid for our kids tuition for a private school. And so that opened my eyes to eBay and like what else could I sell, right? And even though I had a business I'm still thinking to myself as an entrepreneur like well that wasn't that hard. Maybe I should try to find more things to sell. So then we actually started a video business on the side of our photography business; they kind of work too, you know one of the same. And then I started building these projectors to transfer old 8-millimeter film. So the old 8-millimeter film that we use to have grown up as kids it was a lot of times silent film but there was some sound when it got; I think it was Super 8 and then I found a machine that was modified to transfer the film. And so when I got that I kind of looked at it and being in the construction world I'm like this is just a modified projector. Let me go ahead and reverse engineer what they did here and I did that and I started selling them on eBay for about 800 bucks. I was selling one or two of them a week. Joe: Wow. Scott: Yeah, so I made about 100,000 on just old projectors that I modified for film transfer and that's kind of what got my wheels spinning about this online stuff. Joe: And it never would have happened if you didn't; I'm going say this so many times, taken some action, right? Entrepreneurs are special people. They come up with an idea and they don't think about it and think about it and think about it and think about it. They've got to do some planning, of course, the more complex world we live in you've got to do some planning especially when you're going to spend some dollars. But I think maybe Scott back then when you and I didn't have any gray hair we were able to take action a little simpler and a little quicker, right? I would just with that whole ready aim fire or ready fire aim what is it? Scott: Yeah. Joe: Those things, right? And I just take my path and hustle and work hard and get it done and figure out the road to that end goal which I knew what the end goal was. I just didn't know the road or the path. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Are you finding now given that you've; I mean you've done all this for 20 years an entrepreneur in many, many different past and you've coached thousands of people through The Amazing Seller podcast and many of them 6, 7, 8, 10 figure exit eventually. Scott: Yeah. Joe: Are you finding that the pathway to that end goal whether it's an eventual exit of a business or just a one of a lifestyle where you can drive your kids to work every day and spend more time with your spouse and you take family vacations, is it more difficult than it used to be in your opinion? Scott: I think it depends on what your final outcome is. I think for a lot of people it's not about building an 8 figure business just to say you built an 8 figure business; to some people it is. It's like bragging rights but for a lot of people; and I know you told me a story about a guy he was a stay at home dad I think and he built his company in 2 years without pulling a dime out of it so they could cash it out and then live off of that and live the life that they wanted. So I think for a lot of people it is that. So for me personally I think it is I don't want to say easy; it's simple. Nothing is easy. Like everything that I've ever done, there's always been struggles and issues that you have to overcome; whatever like that's business. You just have to learn how to adapt, how to move, and adjust. But I think it is actually easier nowadays to build a business that you can potentially exit. And actually getting to know you more, getting to know the team over at Quiet Light has actually got my wheels spinning once again at looking at this as an opportunity for me to build something maybe from scratch, get it to a certain level, and then sell it, and then you just repeat that process. Like I could build a team to just help me do that. So again my wheels are always spinning. And the more I talk to you and I start hearing these stories I'm like that seems like a pretty straightway to go. But the principles and the concepts are pretty much the same. They haven't really changed. And that's what is in the book is really these pillars; these core things that make up a market, make up products, make up traffic; like all of that stuff hasn't really changed. The platforms change but the principles never change. Joe: You addressed some of the approaches in Part 2 of the book about building your future proof business. Scott: Yeah. Joe: You started out as an Amazon guy, right? You were selling on Amazon telling your story in the podcast but you've evolved quite a bit. Can you address that and then we'll talk about how the book addresses it as well? Scott: Well yeah but the book itself actually is my pivot. So we talk about pivoting all the time. So when I started the podcast you're right I was getting into the Amazon game just like everyone else was. It's just I was kind of doing it and other people were just kind of consuming information and saying like I'll wait until we have all the pieces that are working or all of the answers, right? Joe: You were telling your story whether it was a success or a failure and everybody was listening. Scott: Exactly. And so as I started to do that I also started to see how the market was shifting. So when the podcast was started it was Scott the Amazon guy. And then after I started to kind of see that the market was changing, more competition was coming, and it was getting a little bit riskier I'm like I don't want to go down that road. Now that doesn't mean it can't work. I just don't want the headaches of constantly just worrying that my accounts are going to get shut down or whatever. So I'm like I'm going to go back to basics build a business from skill sets that I've built and I talk a lot about that in the book like everything we've done we've built skill sets that we can then leverage in the future. So for me to really go down that road of like okay where was I van and where am I now, it's all about evolving; all about growing. I mean I think we're all doing that as we learn more things like even like when I first started I didn't think about having a brand that I could exit. And now I'm thinking; a lot of times I'm thinking to myself could this brand be sold, what would it take to sell this business? So a lot of times I'm thinking more along those lines now. But like I said people are always kind of like thinking of me as the Amazon guy and I don't want to be known; I don't want to 20 years from now be Scott the Amazon guy. I want to be the guy that helped people build a business that allowed them the life that they want and that they deserve. Joe: That's what I'm seeing with the people that I've met that have listened to your podcast and then to your events and are connected with you in any way. Whether it's Brand Accelerator Live, your inner circle Mastermind group, or The Amazing Seller podcast; they're not just building Amazon businesses, they're building businesses that will allow them to live the life that they choose to first and foremost. Scott: Right. Joe: Some of them that's all about building value and exiting and others it's all about taking care of others. Rachel; I had a conversation with one of your followers, listeners, attendees, whatever you want to call them, Rachel we don't use the last name but an amazing story. She's building a business so that she can help others. Scott: Yes. Joe: She's going to make money off the business but that's not the focus. The goal is to be able to use that money to help others foster children charities and things of that nature; really good people. You're building good humans which I think is terrific. You're surrounding yourself with them as well. Scott: It's pretty awesome. It's funny Joe I was just listening to the Ask Scott session that we recorded there live at Brand Accelerator and it just happened that the one lady came up and was telling us about her problem and her problem was is that she was wondering how she was going to keep up with the amount of scale. And I said that's a real bad problem to have. And I knew you were in there; I thought you were in there and I called you out and I go I think this is a question for Joe later kind of let him help you on that. But it's really; it's pretty rewarding to sit there and think to yourself I had something to do just because I showed up, pressed record, and started helping people. That right there that will; to me that surpasses any amount of money that I can make from a podcast is hearing other people's stories and how they're set up now to really live the life or maybe donate to their charity. That's like again the effect of the take action is the effects of that we're able to do the ripple effect on other people but also on your life and your business. So it's really about the ripple effect all the way through. Joe: Yeah, not necessarily about just building that business and exiting it. It's everybody involved along the way. Scott: 100%. Joe: That lady was Karen by the way and she did have some good problems, right? People wish to have her problems. Scott: Growth every year, year after year, and I don't know… Joe: Yeah. How do I keep up with buying more inventory? One of the things that you talked about which I think is really, really important both in the book and on stage and I'm going to just summarize for anybody listening. This book really encapsulates everything Scott's done in his life and what you've done in your life, Scott. But then it also gives a pathway to taking action and seeing what the impact and effect of that action is. But someone said look I'm busy I've got a full-time job. I'm trying to do this. How did you find the time for that? How do you find the time for this if you; you're an advocate of don't quit your day job if you have one do a little side hustle and build this over time until it's safe to exit. How would you address that question but Scott I just don't have time? Scott: Yeah and I actually I address this on stage when I came to that point because I shared my story that I was working 60 plus hours a week for my father's company running I think was like 13, 14 guys at one time that were underneath me making sure that those jobs got done. So I was always the first one there and the last one to leave like always. On the side, I was building a house from scratch. I was like 25 years old. Joe: That took a little time. Scott: It took me 11 months. And I remember Joe my mother in law lived up on the Hill. She lived probably I don't know maybe 500 or 1,000 feet. She was up on a hill though and she could look down and see the property. We had two acres. And I remember one night I wanted to get this one spot on the house done outside. It was up in the peak. I had a 30-foot ladder up against the house and I had floodlights out there at 2 o'clock in the morning because I wanted to finish. She couldn't sleep because she was worried about me going to fall and I'm up there nailing up my siding because I wanted to get that peak done because I didn't want to come back to it the next day and do it. And then I got up at 6x o'clock and I went to work. So when people say I don't have time I don't have sympathy for that because you probably have time you just are not really wanting it bad enough in my eyes. You know what you're watching your TV show or maybe you're taking an extended lunch break or maybe you're just oh I need my 8 hours of sleep you know like get 6 for a month, right? I mean it's not going to kill you but if you really want it bad enough you will find the time. And I've done it. My photography business when I was learning that when I was getting ready to leave my job I was up till 2 o'clock in the morning figuring out Photoshop. I was figuring out how we were going to do billing for our customers. Like I was figuring out all that stuff late at night and then I'd get up and I'd go to my job because I wanted it so bad. And I was so interested in it because I wanted it so bad. Joe: Yeah you are preaching to the choir if I'm the choir right now because yeah look the thing that I see consistently I mean I've done this in my life you and I have been self-employed for about the same amount of time and it's always started with a side hustle and then work like crazy. As you are building that business you're not really making a whole lot of money. You're not taking anything out and oddly enough when you're making the most money is actually when you're not working as hard in my experience. Scott: Right. Joe: You get it up to that level and it starts to just; it's a scalable business. And with that scale, it's starting to generate enough revenue to kick off and then you can quit your day job and then you can live that lifestyle that you want. It's hard though when you're a hard worker and a hustler like yourself and like so many people that are listening. How do you shift from that I'm used to working, I love working, I'm going to work, I'm going to work, I'm going to work to I'm going to sit down and I'm going to have coffee and breakfast with my wife every day by the pool at 8 o'clock? Do you have the discipline to really reschedule your downtime? Scott: You definitely have to schedule it for sure. You have to schedule it and I'm getting better with that like I'm still not perfect Joe. I have to make sure that at 6 o'clock at night that's my cutoff. I'm not going to do anymore posting and I'm not going to do any more answering. It's hard because we can work as long as we want. And when you start to see momentum you want to work more because you want [inaudible 00:24:18.18]. But I've made it very, very clear in my life that I want to have that time. I literally wrote out a vision board and really I created a video years ago that I wanted to see come true. It wasn't like you know the woo-woo stuff but it was like what am I working towards. And one of them was having a coffee and breakfast with my wife. And so here we are many years later and literally, I just got in now. I mean I started my day today at 10 o'clock in the morning. I had a first interview at 10:00. I dropped my daughter off the school at about 7:45. My wife and I got back here. We went out to the pool. I had coffee. I was out there with the dogs. I had my laptop. I was answering a few emails; doing stuff. I'm out there chillin' with my wife hanging out. And that's what I want my life to be. Now could I be doing other things to try to make the Amazing Seller bigger or my e-commerce businesses bigger? Yes, I could but I choose to; like that's kind of like my time. You know what I mean? Joe: Right? Scott: And I do think it's hard. You have to be disciplined. A lot of people say Scott I could never do it. I would never get any work done. Then maybe you do need a job. Joe: I've heard that often. I couldn't work from home I could never get any work and that's just discipline. It's focus and discipline. Scott: 100%. Joe: We've gone from how do you find the time to do this extra side business and side hustle and grow it to how do you schedule your downtime so that you could work. You don't need to as much but scheduling your personal life to make sure that you're there for your family and things of that nature. My kids are older than you. Well, not actually mine are 16 and 18 right. You've got 21? Scott: 21, 14, and 11, yeah, Joe: So I've driven my kids to school from kindergarten right up until last year when my oldest got his license and it's an honor, right? It's a privilege and an honor to be able to do that. And when they look back someday that's what they're going to remember. They're not going to remember that Dad was making more money or something like that. So from finding time to scheduling time; your book specifically talks about all of that in your life and creating the mindset of action and everything you've done in your life. But can you address like a little bit of the how to's in terms of building that future proof business and the steps that you go through with the folks that are listening. Scott: Yeah. To me, it's very, very simple and even if you're looking at this because I know people listening here are probably looking to possibly buy a business or sell a business. Here's the deal. Like whenever you're looking at an opportunity you want to first see if there's a market already there. Like a lot of people say I want to invent a market. That's risky because we don't know; I mean if you ever listen to Shark Tank they always say has the market validated the product? No I don't have any sales it's in pre, or we're kind of building this thing out, it's in pre-production, or we're in like the pre-stage and they're like come back to us when you have sales that the market actually voted and said we actually want and need this. So the market is critical. You have to have a market. Now I'd like it to also be a submarket. So we could talk about like and I always talk about the bass fishing. So if we went like fishing we would niche it down into bass fishing. If we wanted to go one level deeper we could go kayak bass fishing. And then we can really own that category and then we can also build out of that category to serve a wider part of the market. But I always like to look at the market first. Then from there, I want to see what's the potential in the market? And that could be going to Amazon and seeing how the products are selling using a tool like Jungle Scout or whatever tool you want. We have these tools that let us know the market's buying these products. Now we can either sell those products ourselves as our own brand or we can affiliate market those products. We can do all kinds of things. So I want to validate that there are actually sales being made there. Joe: Let me just stop you for a second because some of the language you're using I don't know if everybody knows it. Talk about the affiliate marketing aspect of it because it's a brilliant path that you educate people on taking. Scott: And I'm going to be doing more of it Joe; I got to be honest with you. I was just thinking about this this morning I'm like man there's so many things that I could cover just for getting back from Brand Accelerator Live. People get stuck at the I've got to launch products or I've got to grow mine. If you bought a business; right now if you bought a business and you're thinking I don't want to launch a whole bunch of products because it's something a whole bunch of capital. Why not take the content side of things. Build out traffic and start putting out products that are related to your product as an affiliate bringing some revenue but also get them to vote that the products that you're putting out there from them they want to buy then you can private label them. So I think it's an easier way to get started. If you're just listening to this and you're getting started, the easiest ways to start looking at the market and how much traffic the market has. And then from there can you get in front of the market by getting attention by posting content, building an email list, like getting attention with influencer, whatever. Then you can start to say okay all these products I'm not going to private label all these it's going to cost me a small fortune. I'm going to start putting products out there like a kayak bass fishing boat. Like I might do that but I'm not going to sell it as my own but I might do an affiliate offer for it. So basically on Amazon, we can use their whole catalog. We can become an associate for them. And it's not going to be a ton of money it's 4%, 8%, depending on where your bracket is; the category but it's a nice easy way anyone can get started. It's not going to cost you hardly anything to set up a website and to start posting content. You can write it yourself or have someone else write it and then just start building that over time. Joe: It's a great way to go back to discovering your market as well because as you niche it down people are going to buy certain things and you can say okay well that one's much more popular than the other. Scott: 100%. Joe: The tools like Jungle Scout do that very, very well. But this is an action you've got proof in your own bank account which ones they like more. What about the multiple channels. You and I have talked about this before. We talked about channel diversification. That's something you talk about quite a bit here as well. Scott: Yeah. Well, I think again there's a lot of businesses that are very successful and you sell these businesses just Amazon FBA. We got someone in my inner circle that bought I think 3 businesses from you guys already. Joe: 3. Scott: Big businesses too; crazy amounts. I mean one of them is doing like 6,000 units a day like insane. Joe: Yeah. Scott: And you know what I mean? So it's massive. So the potential there is huge but also I look at like there's a little bit of risk there because if that channel decides to go away or they shut your account down there is a potential. So I want to build a back end support there in some kind. So I want to start building content. I want to start getting my own traffic so that way there I could lead people over to my Shopify store or I could leave people over to my channel if something shall happen. Now if it doesn't; great, keep using that. And I don't; I never tell anyone not to use the channel. Use the channel. Leverage the heck out of it. Drive traffic to Amazon. Build up your rankings. Do all of that stuff. But I do think that having your own email list is a must. I think having your own content, your own home base I call it; your own blog, your web site so this way you control that asset. And to be honest with you Joe like I'm really interested lately and I think I talked to you about it, content sites to me are never going anywhere. We're always going to have content sites. We're always going to have information that people are going to be searching for. So for me what I'm looking at doing is starting something and building it over the course of 12 to 18 months. Now listen to what I just said there over 12 to 18 months not 3 days or 30 days. It's going to take time for the search engines to kind of pick it up and get it indexed and all that stuff. And if I can build that piece of property like I used to do in the construction days; I find a piece of property, I build a house on it, I get some revenue coming in by renting it out, and then I might want to sell it. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. And there's ways you can do that without even having to launch a physical product until you get to the 12, 18th month. Then you can decide what you want to do. But you can start getting revenue coming in from affiliate offers, from AdThrive, Mediavine, any of these other networks just from the content coming in. So for people that say I can't get started because I don't have the capital, I don't have the know-how, I don't have the time, do something like even if it's just building out a content site over the next 12 months do that. Just do that. Joe: Yeah I think again taking action, right? Scott: Yeah. Joe: We just got to say that whole lot here; the take action effect. This book as I've read it and as I've talked to you, you are an interesting mix of inspiration and how-to; and you are the book. That's what emanates. You call it a pivot I call it it is what you are, you're inspiring people to go beyond their current capabilities or to get started and take some action but you're also teaching them how to do it. So it's a nice blend of both and was that the main objective of the book itself? Scott: It was actually a little bit difficult and to be honest with you Joe because I didn't want to just be let me show you how to start a business. I wanted it to be for someone also that has a 7 figure business right now that are 100% dependent on Amazon they read the book and they go oh I can do all of these other things and then probably bring in more revenue, bring in more traffic, get a better multiple when I go to Joe Valley and Quiet Light. So I was looking at two different paths. So as you're reading the book you're going to hear me talk about if you're feeling stuck at your corporate job right now and you feel like you can't get out of it here's what you could do but if you already have a business you should do this too. So it's kind of like you're serving two camps. And it was kind of hard when I was going down that path because I wanted to really talk to both people not just the person starting. Joe: Yeah and I think it's an important message for both. For those that have bought a business that want to diversify beyond Amazon and those that are listening to their spouse and that spouse is saying honey we've got a great gig here you've got health insurance and a retirement plan are you crazy you're going to buy an Amazon business and [inaudible 00:34:05.8]. No, you teach them how to do something on the side as a side hustle and let it grow and take less risk but still have that that additional income down the road or a decent exit as well which boosts the retirement plan. Right, Scott? The book itself again folks it's called The Take Action Effect; Mr. Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller and beyond. The beyond card is you just do so many other things. How do people find the book; where can they go, what do they need to do to get this in their hands and learn everything you've talked about? Scott: Yeah, just go to TakeActionEffect.com and there's just a simple page there. It'll tell you a little bit more about the book and it'll lead you over to most likely Amazon you get paperback hardcover or the Kindle; pretty affordable to be able to take this information. I don't think people are taking the value in a book is much as they should. It is a way for you to really understand me and my story but also who I've helped and who I want to help. And it allows us to start that relationship because I'm all about relationships. And I want to be able to build a relationship with you way before you would ever hire me or come to one of my workshops or inner circle or whatever. And this book is a way to do it. It's a really, really small investment to be able to really get you thinking differently because the way I look at it Joe is we're installing the Take Action mindset. We're taking this to where you think you know what I don't think I can do this and by the time you get done with even the first; probably quarter of the book you're going to feel like you're going to conquer the world. And that's what it's really all about. Now, Joe, before I do end this I'm going to ask you a question. Joe: Yes? Scott: I want to know one of your take action moments. Joe: Okay. Scott: What's something that you can recall that you're like if that never happened my life would be totally different. Joe: Let's see. Well going back to your vision board I did something very similar once upon a time and it was a Tony Robbins program writing down my goals and envisioning what they are. And I literally; and this is I described my life; I put it all down from the lifestyle that I wanted to live and the type of woman I wanted to marry. Lo, and behold within 6 months I met her. Scott: Wow. Joe: I showed her the list maybe 18 months later and it described her to a T. So that is a Take Action moment for me in terms of writing that list down. Now it changed over the years in terms of my goals. At one point I wanted to have the boat in the harbor in Portland Maine. Well, I live in North Carolina right now that's not really going to happen. And I didn't want it once I had kids. I couldn't really spend much time with them on a boat in that situation. The other one Scott when I'm at Brand Accelerator Live is; I mentioned it before we started recording, is that I have taken action on moving forward with my book as well. We're not going to talk too much about it. I'm going to drop a little hint in here and then I'll be quiet for 12 months. But it's something that I've talked about for many years and I've tried and I've tried and I just haven't gotten it done. And you've inspired me to get it done. And some of your tips in the book itself have allowed me to sort of bullet point what I need to do to take more action and get it done; so two impacts right there and I think is going to make a huge difference for me. But again it's not always; like Rachel says it's not always about me or her. It's about how you can help others as well. And I think you're doing that. You're helping others first and it's benefiting you. And I think it's the best way to go about it. So thank you, Scott, for being my friend, for being my colleague, for being on the Quiet Light podcast. I hope to see you on it again. Scott: Thank you so much, Joe. I appreciate it, man. Links and Resources: The Take Action Effect Scott's Website Scott's Podcast Scott's YouTube Channel

The more a seller expands his net, the more buyers he can catch. Often on the Amazon seller revenue lines we see the lack of traction on the international side of the game. How can you get your brand safely and productively into other Amazon Markets? The truth is that Amazon UK or any other country off the .com grid are potential revenue streams and expansion opportunities if approached in the right way. Today's guest walks us through that expansion process step by step so that business owners and buyers can envision the opportunities to be had. Kevin Sanderson is a multiple six figure seller with over three years of experience on Amazon. When he started out simply selling on Amazon he had one item and very quickly turned that into about 80 skus. He learned that by expanding into the international marketplace he could target products that he could plug into that market successfully. He has a passion for helping others successfully sell on Amazon's International Marketplaces via his website and podcast and is here to tell you how you can succeed beyond dot com. Episode Highlights: Which products are best for which country and where to start in the sell. Reasons Kevin recommends starting in Canada to get your feet wet. Where to go next and how to get over the translation hurdle overseas. Why Germany stands out in the arena. The recommended steps and estimated time-frame for the expansion process. What Amazon offers by way of help. Differences in taxation in the international marketplaces. How to approach the customer service aspect in those markets. Services that Kevin offers for someone looking to expand internationally. The importance of attending ECommerce events for opening doors and connecting. Transcription: Mark: Joe welcome back from your vacation, you've been gone for a few weeks and Quiet Light Brokerage absolutely nothing happened because you aren't here. Joe: Did you missed me at all? I think I had an email reminder, a notification in there that said if you really need me find me on Whatsapp and no one needed me at all which is very humbling. The reality is that we think we're really important cogs of the wheel and if there's enough cogs you're not so nobody missed you at all. Mark: Well the truth is actually people would email you and then they would get my email and then I was home that they don't want to work with you they actually want to work with me so I've just been picking off all your potential clients. Joe: I love it, no, take all those 10 million dollar listings. Thanks, I appreciate that. Mark: Absolutely I appreciate it too, very much, and so does my wife. Anyways this week I want to talk about something that we've seen a lot of with Amazon Sellers. We look at these P&Ls and oftentimes what you see are these revenue lines on the P&Ls where it's your typical Amazon sales coming through and then you see this Amazon UK or Amazon Europe or something like that and you see some revenue kind of pop and then trail off after a while. And when you talk to the client or the seller about this the backstory is always the same. I thought about expanding to Europe and UK but I didn't really gain traction there and it was just a lot more work than I really anticipated so we've decided not to really do that. The fact is though Amazon UK, Amazon Europe, Amazon Canada, and some of these other countries are really, really good expansion opportunities but you have to go about it the right way and that's not always as straight forward as putting the product up and launching that store. You talked to somebody who we guess went over exactly in that process how do you actually expand into in other markets on Amazon. Joe: Yeah it's Kevin Sanderson from Maximizing Ecommerce. He's affiliated or associated with Scott Voelker who we enjoy from the Amazing Seller and Brand Accelerator Live. And Kevin talks about just that. Okay if you're going to expand start here then go there and then go there so that you're getting your feet wet and doing it in a way where you're learning without getting so frustrated you just throw your hands up and walk away which as he said I see too often. Interestingly enough yesterday I'm doing a valuation call and exactly what you talked about revenue line for Amazon.com and Amazon Europe overseas and there were 3 or 4 months of revenue starting to climb, climb, climb, and then nothing because that particular individual just got frustrated. She didn't think she was going to get a bang for a buck there because it was so complicated and confusing for her. But the reality is she took on too much all at once. Kevin's approach is more methodical and I like it. It's simple. It's clean. It's logical. It's not going to be earth-shattering for anybody listening. But what it is going to do is going to give them reinforcement to what they probably already know and what they should do and hopefully will do as well. Mark: Yeah fantastic topic we do have a shout out to give to somebody who guessed the right intro to one of our podcast and you got that email, Joe. Joe: I did it's from Westin Woodelf, I've got a cold after this vacation, Westin Woodelf, he sent me an email actually while I was on vacation. It is one of the very few emails that I checked. He guessed The Founder which is the story of McDonald's the movie clip. So shout out to you Westin and thanks for listening. I appreciate all the kind words and I assure you we will get more people that bought e-commerce businesses or online businesses from us and we'll get them back on the podcast 6, 12 months after that something that he said he enjoys listening to Mark and wants to hear more of. Mark: Yeah and you know I went to a meetup; a shout out to the people that I met up with for the Rhodium Minneapolis Red Calibers meet up just a couple of weeks ago. I got some good feedback on the podcast there as well you know the point here being not to say guys you have to praise us because we need it for our egos more what do you want to hear. And I got some really good feedback on that. If you guys have stuff that you want to hear or a style of podcast that really stands out to you, let us know, send us an email. We do insist that we want to create content that's useful for you and helpful. And again keep guessing those movie titles that should be fun. The Founder is a great movie as well highly recommended for anyone that loves entrepreneurship. Joe: And we actually respond to emails. Its inquiries@quietlightbrokerage.com Mark and I get those personally. We also have our own personal email addresses which are really complicated joe@quietlightbrokerage.com or mark@quietlightbrokerage.com and Mark as a K, not a C. Mark: I spell it the right way. Joe: You do spell it the right way, sorry everybody else. Alright, let's get to this Kevin Sanderson, Maximizing Ecommerce, how to get your brand safely and productively in other Amazon markets. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today we've got Kevin Sanderson from Maximizing Ecommerce on the podcast. Kevin, how are you today? Kevin: I'm doing excellent. Thanks for having me. Joe: Where in the world are you? Kevin: I am in south-ish Florida, about 35 minutes north of West Palm Beach. Joe: Alright so we're recording at the end of July so you're definitely inside the house as always, right? Kevin: Oh yes, it's nice and humid. Joe: So as I said in the pre-call here that we don't do fancy intros so why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what your background is. Kevin: Sure. So I've been an e-commerce seller for about 4 years. I remember when I got into the whole thing I just happened to be looking at my phone podcasts and this podcast called the Amazing Seller podcast came up. I was like this sounds interesting so I listened to it. I was like this sounds like something I want to go towards and I went out to Walgreens and they were closing out the summer specials of like whatever they're going to close out to make room for back to school and I bought a bunch of those blue cooler thingy's you'd use in your cooler to keep your cans cooled in the freezer. Joe: Okay. Kevin: And I remember sending some of them off to Amazon with a few other things. And I got an e-mail that my stock had been checked in and I was playing with the app like most people do once you start doing this for a while. It keeps saying this 0 sales, 0 dollars, all this and then all of a sudden I refresh it and there's a 1. I was like hey someone bought it. It was like the day it got checked in. I was prepared like mentally that it might take weeks or whatever but this just like rush of adrenaline came over me. And I went running into the living room and my wife and was like you have to see this and I almost like threw the phone at her. I was so excited. But at first, she thought it was insane just kind of like where is my husband who is this person but then she realized I was just excited about it and then she kind of got it. And so from then on, I've been hooked on the whole e-commerce game. Joe: So it's that easy just go to Walmart, Walgreens, buy some stocked out items and put it on Amazon and you're in business. Everybody succeeds that way, right? Kevin: Yes I came to learn there's more steps in the process for that. It was like one of the things I learned very early on in my resale arbitrage career which is short-lived was that I didn't like having to keep finding stuff and bending it in. So at least what it did was it clicked the switch in my head that like okay this is possible. It's not just I'm hearing someone talking about it. I actually saw like the 0 go to a 1 and it became real to me. Like okay now let's go after building my own brand. And so the fall was coming up and at the time I was a high school football official and I decided to take a year's worth of earnings and put that off to the side to go towards my 1st product. And so from let's say February of the following year which would have been 2016 I put up my own branded products and then I kept reinvesting into it. And then back in December of 2018, I left my job and it was like I'm going to do all this full time. And I now have about 80 products that I sell. 80 different SKUs as well as…I sell mostly on Amazon but still try to diversify as much as possible. One of the things that's been very successful for me is selling internationally; so I sell in Canada, the 5 European marketplaces, Japan, and I'm about to launch in Australia and Mexico. Joe: Okay and that's what we're going to dig into today folks is how to expand beyond Amazon.com into these other marketplaces. You know I have multiple valuation calls a week talking to people that are looking to exit someday and just yesterday I talked to somebody that we have…she's a friend of Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller who you're friends with as well. And she tried to expand to Europe and found that it was just too complex and complicated. So it's funny one of the growth areas that savvy; not savvy, that's the wrong word because this person is actually very savvy. One of the growth areas that people with a kind of international experience see is international. They'll look at an Amazon business it's US only and they can see where it may plug into one of the European markets or all of them. Whereas others they try it and they fail because it's just at a level of detail that is not good for them and their business and they stick to one; focus on the US. You set up a business for that where you're helping people expand beyond the US. So talk to me about A. which country because I have a couple in mind I want to see which countries are the best or if it's not that simple that different products are better for different countries. Kevin: Well there's a little bit of different products are the best for different countries. But one simple thing people can do is if their product is selling in the US and they just look up the keyword of how someone might find their product, so if they are selling garlic presses as our friend Scott would use or fishing lures they could look up garlic presses or fishing lures on Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk which are the Canadian and UK versions of Amazon and just go to Jungle scout and Jungle Scout will give you an idea. Now don't get caught up in the numbers but what I would say is if you are making sales in the US and similar products to yours are making some sales internationally in those international marketplaces it's at least worth evaluating. You should at least try. Now to your point, there are some hoops you have to jump through. One of the things I recommend to people if you're going to start off with go into Canada because logistically I personally find it easier. They have what's called GST, HST which is their goods and services tax, harmonized sales tax, it's all kind of the same thing but for the most part most people are just going to register with the federal government there and it works very similar to how sales tax work in the US except it's simpler for most people. And in most cases, they're going to have to file for that sales tax once per year. Joe: So do you do that just for the exercise of learning how to go international because it's easy because it is Canada, are you going to get your bang for your buck there, right? The population is 10% of the US so you can expect 10% of your US revenue in terms of Amazon. How do you; is it really worth it? And I think I know the answer. I think I know what you're going to say but I want to hear you say it. Is it really worth it in terms of dollars or is it a combination of dollars and revenue and the exercise of going international and getting comfortable with it? Kevin: I would say all of the above. So the way I look at it is you have a net and as widen that net in the sea of Amazon you're going to catch more fish. And some of those fish are exclusive to; and by fish I mean customers, some of those are exclusive to Canada or they're exclusive to the UK. And as you catch more of those fish you're going to get more sales. So the way I like to look at it is if you said I'm just going to go into all the international marketplaces if you try to do it all at once it's going to be too much. Canada is relatively simple. I think it's a good place to get your feet. So what I did was I went to Canada and then I went to the UK that which is their sales tax is a little more complex and there's more kind of like landmines you could go hit on that you don't want to. So it's best to start off with Canada going to the UK. And then you can go into other parts of Europe and use UK as a base of operations. And the nice thing is if you go into the other marketplaces in Europe you'll most likely have to translate your listings but at least if you're starting off in the UK and Canada you're talking about 2 English speaking countries. So that also lowers some of the barriers. Joe: Okay, so you're saying a little bit of everything going into Canada so I think it's a great idea that people start there. And if all you do; if you're doing $100,000 in discretionary earnings or profit and you expand to Canada and all it does is add $10,000 it's not hard. Kevin will talk about a little bit in terms of how to do it and can help people do it but that additional $10,000 in discretionary earnings if your business is worth a 3 time multiple you just added $30,000 a month to the overall value of your business if you decide to exit someday. But I like that baby-stepping it doing one country at a time starting with Canada and then another English speaking country being the UK. As far as VAT it is complicated. We've done podcasts on it with Avask accounting; the folks over there. Kevin: That's what I use. Joe: Great. Folks use them as well. I know Melanie they refer people back and forth to us. Anytime we've got someone buying a brand that's selling in the UK we always connect people with them because they're good. And for folks, that's AvaskAccounting.co.uk A-V-A-S-K. In terms of the next country so you're going to go Canada then you're going to go UK where do you go next? Kevin: I would say most likely Germany. Germany outside of the UK is going to have some of the best sales in Europe. Now you're starting to get into a different language but there's translation services out there. Amazon has translation services but there are some asterisks that you might not actually be eligible for kind of strange. Joe: I don't think the automated translation services work all that well and here's why. I was just in France and Switzerland and used Google Translate. It kind of worked. I'm literally driving down the highway from I think at the airport to Paris and I'm in the car with an Uber driver and he's got Google Translate up on his phone. I've got it up on mine. I say something and it spits it out in French. We're having this weird conversation but it didn't quite fully translate it properly. So I couldn't imagine using a translation service, an automated translation service like that. What kind of experience do you have with that if you're going to translate something to German? Do you hire individual people that are native speakers or do you use a translation service? Kevin: So I've tried all kinds of different things. I've had Amazon help me with translations and theirs is essentially machine in most cases. Joe: I got it. Kevin: The ones I've seen it's machine translated and then a person checks it. Now the issue is who's checking the checker? So if you're English speaking and you're trying to check whether or not German is correct it's got to be a regular translator. I found a German translator that I've had good luck with and I had someone else check it. So if you find one let's say on Upwork or Fiverr or something and you have someone translate something for you, see if you can hire someone else to critique it. Or if you know someone who speaks German or Spanish or whatever language you want to translate have someone else verify it for you and then you know okay now I've got someone good. I've got; actually oddly enough in the office building, I work out of there's a translation company down the hall that actually they've worked with American Translator Association translators. They have contracts with all the court systems and they've done stuff for GE and Disney and a bunch of other companies. So I've found them to be pretty reputable too. But if you're not 100% sure always have someone else check it. Even if you're hiring let's say on Fiverr and you give like a paragraph of stuff, you can hire 3 or 4 people and have them check against each other. And whoever's getting the best load out of everyone else is probably the one to go with. Joe: Awesome. I think that's a great idea. There's been times I've looked at Amazon listings and I could tell it's been written by somebody that does not speak English as their native tongue and it's obvious and I lose confidence and I don't necessarily want to buy that product. And I imagine it's the same somebody is in Germany thinking it. As far as the countries go, I know that one product is not going to be perfect for all countries but from a brokering standpoint and what I've seen over the last several years is that Germany stands out amongst all of the European countries as the one that seems to bring people that are exiting that have the most sizable business, sizable revenue. Why do you think that is? Is there something about the German marketplace that makes it stronger and larger than the other marketplaces? Is it population? Is it because of the affluent nature of the individuals in that country or is it just pure happenstance? Kevin: I think it's a combination of several different things. So I think as; to take a step back as you go outside of the US and you have more hoops to jump through fewer people want to take those hoops. And then as you start getting into other marketplaces that aren't English now that's another hoop that you have to jump through of getting it translated. So fewer and fewer sellers I think are willing to do that from what I found and so you have less competition. So then combine with I think the population size and the people in Germany; I still do better in the UK than I do in Germany. It could just be my product but I've heard people say the opposite. So it just depends and you never know until you test it. Joe: Okay, Alright so 1st step go to Canada, give it a shot, 2nd UK, and then 3rd another country; Germany. What services are out there? How do you expand? What steps do you recommend someone take in order to go through this process of expanding? And like how much time would you give it? We've talked about 3 countries here so far, what kind of timeframe would you give that in terms of checking those off and moving and expanding into these countries? Kevin: Well if you're doing it alone what you would do is you would 1st register with whatever governmental agency you need to register with. So if it's Canada you go to the Canadian Revenue Agency and register for what's called non-resident importer status and also a GST, HST number. It's all basically the same number, it's just the programs that you're under. Joe: Can all that be done through your Amazon accounts when you want to expand to different countries? Because they're always asking you to expand to different countries, are they offering those services or connections? Kevin: So Amazon will often times help you. Here's my take on Amazon. If they're calling you, answer the phone. It's the way I look at it. See what they have to say. Now I don't want to disparage Amazon but what I've come to find is the people at Amazon they're always very well-intentioned but they're siloed. So no one fully understands the whole journey as a seller that you're going to go through like another seller. So I'm happy to help walk people through that. If people have other friends that are doing it check with your friends and get some advice as well. Just because there are a lot of pieces that even some services like let's say you know I know that there's freight forwarders that will help you get registered in Canada or another country but they may be not getting you into all the programs that you really should be in because they're looking at it from their standpoint of like okay to get stuff across the border you need this but maybe you also need something else that they didn't register you for because that's not necessarily their focus. And then Amazon, their focus is really in my experience the folks who are calling you saying hey sign up in wherever country they're just trying to get you into that country and then from there it's okay go for it. Joe: Okay. First, do the research on that country and make sure that your products are selling or something similar is selling and you've got buyers there. Okay, and how are you dealing with the taxes and registrations? Can you cover that a little bit? We had Avask on the podcast talking about that. Can you talk briefly about the differences on how taxes work on products in the US versus over in Europe? Kevin: Okay. Well, I think the simplest way to look at it is you have 2 buckets of taxes. You have sales tax and you have income tax. So income tax you're still most likely as long as you're using your US-based entity you're going to still owe Uncle Sam assuming someone's from the US, but you're still going to owe Uncle Sam for income taxes or whatever country you live in. So then in that country, there's going to be some sort of tax on the sale; so whether it's a GST, and the VAT; whatever. Joe: What does GST stand for? Kevin: Oh sorry goods and services tax which is the sales tax of Canada. So the nice thing about Canada is in most cases and a disclaimer here is I'm not a tax preparer so please make sure that you check with an appropriate tax professional about your own situation. But what I found is for most people and in talking to people that do this in the tax world is that you're most likely going to in Canada register for the goods and services tax and the harmonized sales tax. It's all just the same thing. Basically, federal tax and you file once per year. It gets added onto the sale just like here in the US. So if they live in a province where let's just say it's 8% and it's $20 then now 1.60 is added on and then you'll remit and file and then you actually in Canada have a few ways that you can save money on what you're giving to the government because if you pay GST at the border or some other way that you're paying you can get credits back. And then it works kind of the same way with credits back in Europe. Now Europe is where it starts getting a little bit more complicated. So the simplest way to look at Europe is where is the inventory getting imported into and where is it being housed. So if it comes across a border you have the requirement to file for VAT or to register and file for VAT in that country. If it's being housed in that country you're required to register and file for that country. So I think the simplest way to do it in Europe is to go into the UK and then keep your inventory in just the UK and they'll allow you to do what's called the European fulfillment network and have your products shipped to the other 4 countries from the UK. Now a lot of times what some people might steer you towards is what's called the pan-European program. It's a little bit of savings but I don't think it's really worth it because you save about a Euro per fulfillment fee and so you think oh wow that's going to add up over time. So the going rate is probably about 7,200 euros per year to be tax compliant, to have somebody do all the tax filings for you and then you end up with like Amazon will put some of your stock in Poland and the Czech Republic those aren't even countries where they have market places but they just store them there. So again once it's stored in a country now you have a VAT requirement and you might have to file; they're filing monthly for you and you have to pay. So you might have to pay the equivalent of like $10or $8 some months to the Polish government and it's just; it's almost like a little nap on your side and it's just like why am I having to do this. Joe: Right. Kevin: So it's expensive and what I came to learn is well I would say the best thing for most people is in Europe you want to sign up for what's called the flat rate scheme. Now when we think of taxes and scheme we think about handcuffs and going to jail. But in Europe scheme just means calculation method. So in most cases, someone who's listening to this is most likely going to be an online retailer and basically, the way it works is if let's say they sell a product in let's say the UK for 12 pounds. The price is actually 10 pounds and 2 pounds of VAT is included in that because the thing that's different about Europe is the price includes the VAT. So just to walk through that math there so you would owe 2 pounds for that sale to the government minus whatever you paid in at the border and whatever other VAT credits you had. Now if you're on the flat rate scheme you don't have to keep all your receipts for everything else. You just file 7½ % so that; just to make the math simple there using that 12 pound product you really just, it's 10 pounds is what you're selling it for so you would owe 7.5% of that which would be 75 pence which is like their pennies over there instead of having to figure out all that other nonsense of like credits and all that. What I found and I could be completely wrong on this is my accountants, they told me, there's not a flat rate scheme currently in the other countries. So if their VAT is 22 or 23% you owe that full 22, 23% as opposed to; because basically, the way it works is instead of like in the US tax is based on, sales tax is based on where the customer lives, in Europe it's where is it being dispatched from; so where they're shipping it from. So if everything is being shipped from the UK you pay the equivalent VAT to the UK. Joe: So that's a pretty substantial saving. You're saving if you're doing penny you're saving a dollar or a euro but the percentages that you're talking about could be pretty substantial in terms of saving if you're shipping off from the UK. Kevin: Yes. Joe: Plus it sounds like your life's going to be a little simpler too. Kevin: Yes. Joe: And I think that's why a lot of people don't expand or expand to the UK and then pull back because it is a little complicated if you do too much too fast. So I like your simple approach here in terms of the flat rate scheme and sticking to the UK. What are you finding in terms of customer service and things of this nature? How do you handle that aspect of it when you're dealing with the European market place if you're in an English speaking native? Kevin: A great question, so there are services out there that will do customer service for you. I've had translators make templates for me because there's a variety of issues that may come up if you've been doing this a while you kind of know what questions people are going to ask you. But also you can do and this is not necessarily something you have to worry too much about because at the end of the day Amazon requires that there's customer service for that customer in the native language. If they're fulfilling it they look at it pretty much as they're handling the customer service. So you will get some emails from time to time that you have to respond to within 24 hours just like you do in the US. And so I sometimes will take the message put it in Google Translate see what it is in English and then I flip it around. So if I'm going back from English to let's say Italian, I then write my response copy and paste the Italian or whatever language I'm using, send it to the customer and I've not really had anyone write back and say I can't believe you just said that to me. Joe: Alright, so it does work in many cases. I did like it. It was an in-depth long conversation about soccer and kids and family with an Uber driver in France where it doesn't work. But I'm sure that in customer service it does work fairly well. Kevin: Yeah like my product didn't arrive, okay we'll send you a new one, usually that that type of thing works pretty well and you can figure out and they can figure out what you mean. Joe: Pretty simple. So, Kevin, you've gone from living in the corporate world to being an entrepreneur. Now you've got 80 different SKUs and you're also; you've got the Maximizing Ecommerce podcast, you are helping other people expand internationally as well. Are you doing that through Maximizing Ecommerce? How does anybody listening that maybe just bought a business and wants to expand internationally is it a service that you offer to help people go beyond the US? Kevin: Yes. So what they could do is if they wanted to go beyond the US actually for your listeners I'd be willing to do a free 30-minute strategy session; no obligation. They could just go to MaximizingEcommerce.com/quiet and it will take them to a page where they can schedule something with me. Just looking for people of course that have an existing business, if they're looking to get started I'll give them a free checklist on how to get their 1st product kind of like how I did. Joe: We'll put that in the show notes as well. Okay. Kevin: Yes and then also if they wanted to hear more live you and I will be hanging out together in September in Fort Worth at Brand Accelerator Live and I will be speaking about selling internationally and then Quiet Light will be there as a sponsor. And then you, I will plug you as well. You will be on stage speaking about how to maximize your sale if you're looking to sell your business one day. Joe: Yeah for folks listening that don't know some of the names we've talked about, Scott Voelker is an entrepreneur, an influencer, a speaker, a motivator, he's got the podcast the Amazing Seller. Scott's local to me sort of in South Carolina. He's got a place up here North Carolina. And Kevin's working with him on Brand Accelerator Live which is Scott's 1st big event. He's bringing in the best people in the marketplace; Greg Mercer from Jungle Scout, Mike Jackness from eComCrew and a whole lot of other folks. And I'm sort of in a very, very low tier of those folks. Greg and Mike and the other folks like that are very, very well known. Kevin: We're really excited that you're going to be there. Joe: Well thank you. But it's a place where I've heard in terms of the Amazing Seller podcast and what you're doing with Scott it's a place where I've talked to so many people who get such value to grow; and this is the thing, grow their Amazon business but take it beyond Amazon as well and learn about how to market off of Amazon and Shopify and e-mail marketing and Facebook or things of that nature and in the affiliate world and blog world and all that stuff. So I think Scott's done an amazing job with that. I love that you're working with him on this 1st and then we're excited to be there. Anybody that hasn't looked it up yet it's Brand Accelerator Live, is that right? Kevin: Yeah Brand Accelerator Live. They can go to BrandAcceleratorLive.com and if someone is listening to this and is saying well I've never been to a live event before whether it's Brand Accelerator Live or something else if they're listening to this in the future go to something. You never know what's going to come out of it. Joe: I'm going to interrupt and say yes that's absolutely true. You know when I 1st started doing what I do here in Quiet Light I had to go to an event and I think the 1st one I went to was in New Orleans. I can't even remember it but it was a big event and I hated it. Because I didn't like; I'm a bit of an introvert. Doing this right now, talking, podcasts, it's great. It's easy. I'm a bit of an introvert but I was at an event I forget exactly where it was and I heard the name Mike Jackness and I said to myself I'm going to find Mike. And I went to be pre-party and I saw Mike sitting there on a couch. I sat down beside and said hello and now Mike and I are really good friends. I sold his business. We've done podcasts together. We've got a lot of relationships in terms of people we know together. And I think he's made an impact on my life and my business and I've hopefully made the same on his. And when you see people; you go to an event like this and you see people standing around in a circle talking to each other and you don't know who they are, your instant thought is oh they all know each other I don't want to step in there that's really awkward. The reality is that they don't know each other. They're just getting to know each other. And I've been in a situation where literally I'm standing around like that somebody walks up and just sort of shoulders their way and starts to nod their head up and down and says hello and we had all just met each other and he came in and met us as well. So it's a hard thing to do but I think in this e-commerce world, listening to podcasts like this is invaluable but the most important thing you can do is get out there and meet people face to face and shake their hand. And then you can connect with them directly about what they're doing in their business and what you're trying to do with yours; and in this case with you taking Amazon businesses beyond the US and into the other marketplaces in a strategic process and how to do that so that you're going to have a higher success rate. So anybody listening get out there and go to a Mastermind event, whatever it might be, Brand Accelerator Live is not going to be a large one; it's down in Fort Worth in September; what are the dates on it? Kevin: September 18th through 20th and then we also have a Mastermind for high-level sellers on the 21st and we still have a couple of slots available for those mastermind folks. But yeah I definitely recommend that you go to something. So to your point like sometimes you will have that feeling like oh gosh it's going to be hard connecting with people, I remember the 1st e-commerce event I went to and I walked into the opening reception and I go to the bar and kind of have that feeling like okay there's safety at the bar, the bartender is giving me the drink. Joe: Unless you're in Mexico or the Dominican Republic but yeah, okay. Kevin: Right exactly. So I turned around and I'm like okay not to go or I do have to like talk to someone. So there was this woman standing there and it was like hi I'm Kevin and then we just started talking and you know I still keep in contact with her to this day. And I started talking to some other people. And so just a random story here is that at this live event I got to know Scott Voelker and met him in another live event because there's that power in connection where you're meeting people live as opposed to even on the phone or messaging and Facebook groups or whatever case is and he was talking about how you wanted to do more to help people in the intermediate to advanced stage. And I like to think of the world as kind of like a puzzle with pieces that all have to come together that's why I do this international thing and then things to work in hotels and conventions. So I told them I think you should do a live event and I can help you with it because I had that experience. And I was thinking like he's going to say oh no [inaudible[00:37:19.2] whatever thank you graciously because he's a nice guy. But he actually said yes tell me more how would we do this. And so this has become an opportunity that's opened up doors for me because I talked to Scott. And I know all kinds of people, maybe it's not Scott Voelker that they're connected with someone who opened up some door connected them to a supplier, they found out some like I never knew about that service or that whatever and it opened up their mind to something else because they were having a conversation over drinks, breaking bread, or just talking or someone in between sessions at a live event because e-commerce sellers for the most part especially the ones that are doing it full time if they're at their house or whatever and they're just in front of a keyboard all day they want to connect with other people. Joe: Yeah. Kevin: Or if they're doing it as a; they have a full time job they are like I don't know anyone else that does this and so all of a sudden he's like surrounded by people that all do the same thing and most e-commerce sellers are not surrounded all day by other e-commerce sellers so it's like a treat being in the same room. Joe: And you'll be amazed when you connect with folks like that how you figure out after a time that there's a half a dozen people in my surrounding area and then you can have a mini sort of mastermind group where you just get together for drinks once a month or something like that. So I think really important number one thank you for your time and helping people figure out how to expand beyond Amazon.com because it is going to bring more value for their bank account and an eventual sale as well. It's going to bring more value. But for those folks that haven't done it get to a live event, meet people face to face, it will make a difference in your business and in your life in my opinion and experience. It's hard to do. I tell you it is hard to do. It's what I do now that I've got this drink in my hand? You turn around and you say hello to someone and just take your hand out. Kevin: Exactly. Joe: And you end up being amazed with value you didn't get in that situation. Again MaximizingEcommerce.com, BrandAcceleratorLive.com, Kevin you're a good man. I appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you in September. Kevin: I'm excited for it. Thanks for having me. Links and Resources: Kevin's Website Kevin's Podcast Listener Promo from Kevin Brand Accelerator Live 2019

  Many people view blogging as a project that requires a specific set of skills and years of writing experience. Both of these certainly help but they're not a prerequisite to getting started. As Jennifer Garza attests, it's more important to just start writing.  In 2011, the mompreneur iSaveA2Z.com, a platform where she could conveniently share tips on how to save money. The website got so much traction that it now has a million monthly views on average. Along the way, Jennifer went through a lifestyle change. She discovered and fell in love with the keto diet. So much so that she created another website around it, Low Carb Inspirations. In a span of a year, she's landed a cookbook deal and is now the proud author of Keto Friendly Recipes: Easy Keto for Busy People. In this episode, you'll learn: How being frugal led to blogging (5:34) How she achieved success as a blogger (6:25) The journey that led to her second website, Low Carb Inspirations (9:38) The true key to her success (20:51) Her ecommerce plans (30:59) I hope this episode inspires all our listeners out there to pursue blogging, whether as a jumpoff point to ecommerce or to supplement existing marketing efforts for your brand. As Scott once said in this podcast, “Attention is the new currency.”  And putting the word out is certainly one way to get more eyeballs on your product. This episode is part of our Women's Month celebration. We'd love to see more women in the ecommerce industry, so if you are a female business owner, head over to www.ecomcrew.com/underthehood and tell us your story. We'd love to feature you on the podcast. Connect with amazing people like Jennifer at ecommerce events like Scott Voelker's Brand Accelerator Live. Get tickets. Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

It's a jungle out there. Today we invite you to reflect on the state of the internet world we live in as entrepreneurs and the impact e-commerce can have on hundreds of thousands of people. One of the most interesting trends we are seeing in the arena is the service companies popping up to support the thousands of Amazon merchants out there. Today's guest, who quickly turned his back on a career in engineering in his twenties, started dabbling in Amazon sales until he came up with the idea for Jungle Scout just before taking off on a three-year world tour. He talks to us about how he spent those years living the true entrepreneur experience while actually building his now 100 person company. Jungle Scout searches, captures, analyzes and refines billions of data points from Amazon to deliver the most accurate data in the industry. His 200,000 plus customers were all clearly in need of his merchant scaling tools. Jungle Scout also offers numerous free educational resources to give young entrepreneurs everything they need to succeed. Episode Highlights: How Greg convinced his wife to give everything up to travel the world. The hesitation, the results, and the payoff of that path. The employee structure of Jungle Scout. The company's original design and what it has evolved to today. Stories that stand out as models of success for Jungle Scout. The Five Minute Pitch – what it is and how it's helping entrepreneurs succeed. How the Jungle Scout scholarship program is motivating young entrepreneurs. What's coming up for Jungle Scout. The company's new initiatives for bringing ease into scouting suppliers and merchandise. How his products have created friction with people in the business but also brought them in as clients. Transcription: Mark: Alright allow me to relax philosophically here for just a minute and I invite you to reflect on just how impactful our current era is with the Internet. Back at Traffic & Conversion in February, I actually hear Richard Branson talk about what they would do to get attention and PR; crazy stunts, parachuting into places and doing these incredible things just to be able to impact large volumes of people. Well as online entrepreneurs we have that at our fingertips and can do that often from our bedrooms just by putting up a good marketing campaign online. But we have the ability to impact thousands of lives and have this network effect as well of these thousands of lives impacting other people's lives. And I looked at where we're at with the Internet today and I think one of the most influential areas are all the service companies that are popping up and SaaS companies popping up to service the Amazon merchants that are out there. And I'd say by far one of the leaders of the pack is Jungle Scout. They—most of everybody that is in the Amazon world, you know who Jungle Scout is. They're kind of ubiquitous with this idea of product research. Joe, you got to talk to Jungle Scout in this week's podcast. Joe: Yeah. Greg Mercer founded Jungle Scout just a few years ago; 4 ½, 5 years ago, an interesting story. Look we talked all about how he came up with a concept, even where he met his wife Lisa, how we started the business, travelled with his wife Lisa for 3 years overseas while growing Jungle Scout. He has only settled back in Austin for the last year and a half, and the size of the company. And then really it was about his entrepreneurial journey. And then we touched on some of the key features in Jungle Scout and some of the other things that Greg has done with his good fortune like scholarships that you can find on the Jungle Scout website and in the show notes here. You know being entrepreneurs and having an easier time impacting people one on one or directly is something that we know here at Quiet Light because we're fortunate enough to be in a situation where we do work one on one with most people. And we know what it means when they sell their business or buy a business and get to stay home and see their kids more. We talked about that a little bit with Greg and like most entrepreneurs he started Jungle Scout to make money. But now that he makes great money that relieves the stress, right? We all want to have money in our bank account to relieve the financial stress but the big thing that fills his cup is the impact that he's having on individual lives. And he gets to hear about that impact when he goes out to conferences and they have a booth like out at Prosper and people come up to him and say listen this is my story, this is how Jungle Scout changed my life. And Greg says quite honestly look it wasn't Jungle Scout; it was you, it was your effort, it was your risk, your reward. Jungle Scout was just a tool that you used. So he's very humble about that but a great guy. Just a good human and I think that there are 2 or 3 things that come out of this podcast. First and foremost you get to hear a great entrepreneur story. He didn't go to school for business yet here he is running a business with 100 the least. What it's like to travel all over the world with your wife? It's right for some people, it's wrong for others. And then just the good things that he's doing with Jungle Scout Scholars and then all the features that Jungle Scout has, and the scariest one. And folks you've got to listen all the way through because we talk more about it at the very end. This is not a pitch for Jungle Scout. It's more of a story of entrepreneurial success. But you can literally find—can I give this away Mark? Can we give it out, too much information; what do you think? Mark: Oh no it's a great tease so get to the end. Joe: You can find your favorite product on Amazon and then use the Jungle Scout tool to find out who the manufacturer is in China. It is scary. But like Greg said it doesn't mean you're going to be successful. We know that all great ideas don't achieve success. There's lots of motes around these great listings on Amazon so it's no guarantee of success even though you find them in [inaudible 00:05:10.9]. But, great podcast, great guy, looking for to get to know him over the years as well. Mark: So he's down in Austin, right? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: Is he going to come to our meet-up coming up at the end of May? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: And when and where is that meet-up? For anyone in the Austin area or who has always wanted to go to Austin area, this might be an awesome opportunity to meet Joe. I probably won't be there. Amanda will be there as well and some really, really good people are showing up to this as well. Joe: Yeah everybody that we've worked with over the years that's down in Austin are getting an invite and hopefully [inaudible 00:05:44.1] groups is going to go. Actually, one person replied today and said thanks for inviting all my friends. It's like you're throwing a party for my friends. I appreciate it. It was pretty funny. And that was RJ at 101. It's going to be May 29th at Oasis at Lake Travis from 6 to 9 pm and it's just drinks nor dares and coming out with friends. Mark: Awesome, and we're going to have a page up on the Quiet Light Brokerage website. We're going to make sure it's included in the e-mails that get sent out. And also on the show notes for this podcast so that you can RSVP if you do want to attend. We would love to see, we'd love to host it for the night; bring a friend, bring lots of friends. It should be a few hours of just really good networking and getting to know some really key players in the space. So please do show up. But now let's get to the good stuff [inaudible 00:06:27.7] Joe: Let's do it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe here at Quiet Light Brokerage and today we've got another great guest on the Quiet Light Podcast. His name is Greg Mercer. Greg, how are you doing today? Greg: Joe I'm doing fantastic. Thank you very much for having me on and it's going to be fun to talk to you. Joe: Founder of Jungle Scout and many other things; a very impressive guy at a very young age. I just looked at your LinkedIn profile, listened to a couple of things on YouTube, and I saw your wife talking about you as well which was all positive by the way. Greg: Oh, that's good to hear. Joe: Well you know the drill, we don't have a whole lot of fancy introductions. So for those that don't know you and don't know the Jungle Scouts can you give a little bit of background on yourself and the business itself? Greg: I'd be happy to. So it's probably most relevant to rewind back to my college days real quick. I went to school to be a civil engineer and graduated. I got a job working as a civil engineer and I just didn't like it at all. I want to become an entrepreneur so I tried a number of different things. But the 1st thing I had a little bit of success with was selling physical products on Amazon. And that's ultimately what led me to quit my job. I was able to kind of replace my income by doing that. My wife and I actually at that point sold all our belongings and started traveling around the world and living out at Air B&B's and running our business from there. And one thing led to another and I—the biggest problem that I had with scaling my Amazon business was finding new products to sell. So I had a number of products up, some of them are doing really well, some weren't doing really well. I didn't really know why some were doing well and some weren't. And what it came down to was the amount of demand there was on Amazon for these products. So being kind of an engineer by background and a very data driven person, I was able to create some algorithms to estimate how well all products on Amazon sell. And that was ultimately how Jungle Scout got started. So I'd never started a software company before but I 1st built a simple extension. I was like no one will probably ever buy this thing but if nothing else I can just use it for myself. And it turns out we were able to get people to buy it because if you fast forward all the way today there's about roughly 100 people that work in Jungle Scout. We have over 200,000 customers so it's grown quite a bit since the 1st day when I didn't think anyone would buy it. Joe: That is absolutely crazy; 100 employees and did you say, 200,000 customers? Greg: Yup over 200,000. Joe: That's amazing. So I want to talk about a few things, I want to talk about you travelled the world with your wife while starting Jungle Scout so that's probably the most important thing. I love the fact that you went to school for civil engineering and then took a completely different path in the sense as an entrepreneur. But then you were able to start it as an entrepreneur while traveling the world and with your wife of all things. And then I want to talk a little bit about what Jungle Scout does and a couple of the other things that you're doing because of the good fortune you've had in the business through Jungle Scout. But let's get personal for a minute. I mean you are what 30, 31 years old I'm guessing? It looks like— Greg: 31. Joe: Right. So you've been at this for a long time. Did you meet your wife in college? Greg: I did actually so yeah we both went to school at Auburn and that's how we met. Joe: Amazing. And she actually was willing to sell everything and travel the world with you or was it her idea to do that? Greg: I think it was my idea. I had read Tim Ferris' book 4-Hour Workweek and I was like well this is pretty cool. Instead of living here we could go live in all these cool exotic places in much less money. And so I was like Elizabeth we should go and try this. And she was like yeah you're an idiot. We're not doing that. But I kept on bringing it up over the months and she's always really enjoyed travel. I think her biggest hesitation at the time was she was working for Target and was on a pretty fast crew path. And I think that's where she envisioned her career moving forward. So I think that was her biggest hesitation. It was like man I'm kind of going to give up my career a little bit, or at least put it on hold if we're going to do this for a year or 2 or 3 years or whatever. So I think that was her biggest hesitation but she's like you only live once let's go for it. And yeah we both ended up loving it. We did it for 3 whole years so we both ended up loving it a lot. Joe: And you launched Scott but just before you took off for a while you were over in Southeast Asia? Greg: Yeah it was actually just before I took off. I like the week before we took off. Joe: And how many years ago was that? Greg: That was is January of 2015, so 4 ½ years ago. Joe: So really you've run the business for the 1st 3 years of its existence by traveling. Greg: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Now the 100 employees that you have are they mostly remote, mostly they're in Austin, whereabouts in the world are they? Greg: When we started the company it was fully remote. I was traveling around so I didn't have an office to hire this people in. So we are fully remote. In January of 2018 is when I moved to Austin. That's where I live now. Since then we've been doing a lot of our hiring in Austin. So I think about maybe 40 of the people are in Austin now and the rest of the team is either remote. And then we also have an office in Vancouver. And then we opened up an office in Shenzhen in China about 6 months ago. So some of the team is there now. Joe: Amazing. So we'll talk about what some of those offices do for Jungle Scout and the subscribers in a bit. Now that you've gone through college, marriage, travelled the world, entrepreneur, you worked with directly and indirectly and inspire a lot of young entrepreneurs all over the world. Is selling everything, packing up, and traveling the world something you would say you got to do to that young man or woman that has the opportunity and is not tied down to things of this nature? Greg: You know I'd say it's not for everyone. And for me, it'll probably be like one of the most fond memories of my whole life. I kind of go in through a period. I think I learned a ton about myself. I met a lot of really interesting people. I learned a lot about different cultures. I think we visited roughly 30 different countries. We would spend about a month sometimes 2 months in each country. So when you spend like a month or 2 somewhere sometimes a little longer but you get like a pretty good sense of just kind of like what day to day life is and what the culture is really about much more than like on a weeklong vacation. So during that, I got to just learn a ton about all these different countries, fascinating things that a lot of countries do like very well. I was able to bring back individual things. I think certain countries do very well so that was really cool. So I'd say it's definitely not for everyone. I think to a lot of people it's very stressful. You're moving all around the world and you don't have any kind of—or we didn't have any kind of a home base. So with all that being said it's definitely for everyone. But if you're interested in it and that seems like something that you'd enjoy I would definitely recommend for you to try. Joe: Is there a particular book that you would have and go to? Is it Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek or is there a great travel one? Greg: Probably. Joe: Probably; okay. Greg: Yeah I'll probably just do the Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek. It's a little bit outdated now. I think it was written over a decade ago now but the spirit is still the same. Joe: I'm reading one of his books now and I'm looking around like my office here. I don't see it but it's the tools to tighten switches. It is one giant book. The great stuff all from the podcast off from those he's taken over the years and a lot of the 4-Hour Workweek stuff as well. It's funny we've had Bill D'Alessandro on the podcast. Do you know who Bill is? Greg: The name rings a bell. Joe: He's from South Charlotte and he runs a consumer products group down at Charlotte. He does a lot of speaking, very close friends with Andrew Youderian from eCommerceFuel and Bill had that same 4-Hour Workweek life at one point and do the same thing working from a beach in Southeast Asia or somewhere. And we talked about this on the podcast now he has staff, an office, a warehouse; in many ways just like you. And he finds that he actually has more freedom now than before because he's got people that can actually do everything for him instead of having virtual assistants that he has to check in with every day. Greg: Right. Joe: So it is not for everyone like you say but certainly something to explore. It's not for me and my wife. I was in your shoes once upon a time when I was living in the frigid cold of Portland Maine for those folks that are listening out from Portland Maine. And this is back in the day when I heard a commercial for GoToMeeting.com I'm like what? What is that? And I went across the hall—I signed up for a free trial. I went across the hall to my other office and log in get the free thing and then go to my PC is what it was. It was a derivative of that. And I log into my PC from across the hall, this is 2nd nature now but I was amazed. I was like this is incredible. I went home and I told Christiana and said hey we're going to Florida for the winter. And she said we are not, you're an idiot. [inaudible 00:15:35.1] we did it for 5 years and then we got the hell out of Maine because it was too cold. Sorry for those folks that are still there. Were in North Carolina now and do love it. But this isn't about me it's about Greg Mercer and Jungle Scout. So let's talk about Jungle Scout and what it does. I know what it does. I've used it a little bit in the past. I know a lot of clients that bought and sold business with Quiet Light have used it. So can you just touch on what it does—let's talk about the progression of it; what it originally did and what it's evolved to today. Greg: Yeah. That's a good way to frame it. So it started out as just a Chrome extension. So most of the listeners are probably familiar with Chrome extensions which is a little add on that you install into your Chrome browser. And what it did is when you were visiting Amazon and you were on the listing or on a search page, you'd click this little Chrome extension and you'd see a little pop up. And on that pop up there was a number of different pieces of data. But the one that people care about the most is the estimated sales data. So that's what I was talking earlier; developing these algorithms that can estimate how well any product on Amazon is selling. Back then it was pretty poor accuracy, today a pretty high degree of accuracy. So that's how it started. Shortly thereafter we launched a web application and the primary functionality in there was again to find good opportunities on Amazon or find out how well things were selling. And that's kind of been transitioning over the years. We now have keyword research functionality. We now have functionality to help you find high quality suppliers or factories. Actually launching in 2 weeks is functionality to help you launch your product on Amazon. And then by the end of the year, it's going to be everything to help you kind of like manage and optimize your Amazon business as well. So the way we like or our mission here at Jungle Scout is to really empower and inspire Amazon entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to be successful. So we're building all that into our software but then we also have just tons of free resources in education and a whole bunch of other stuff just to help people be more successful on Amazon. Joe: Yeah I've looked at some of that both on your website on LinkedIn on YouTube. You are all over the place. It's pretty impressive the reach that you've got and the folks that saying you are praising Scott Voelker is somebody we know in common does that well and does it all the time. I love the empower people approach and to fulfill their dreams not only the staff that you have but the people that used to program, the 200,000 or so subscribers that you have. A lot of people in your—let's call your world, I want to call you an influencer because I think that's what you are Greg. So in your world, a lot of folks say I've made X many millionaires. You've heard a lot of stories over the years of the way that the tools that Jungle Scout has and provides to people how it's changed their lives, can you think of anything or anyone that stands out and what an impact it had in terms of with their Amazon business and how it changed their lives? Greg: I can think of a whole bunch of stories. And actually, I was—I think the last time we saw each other was at Prosper Show. And going to conferences and stuff like that it's always a great chance that I talk to all these customers in real life. So like probably a dozen times throughout that 2 or 3 day conference whatever it is like someone came up to me very emotional a few different times in tears but like just telling me this life story about how they found Jungle Scout and how it helped them create this business. And that's like a really, really special thing to be a part of. I never would've thought that in a million years like starting this business that people would come up to me in tears being like—just telling a story about how they were at a really low spot or they hated their job or whatever else and especially starting the business is what changed their life. A lot of them kind of attribute or say like Jungle Scout is kind of what caused that or encouraged them to do so or empowered them with the tools to have the confidence to do so. So yeah I mean there are tons of stories but I think most of them have like a ton of things in common, at least the ones that are most memorable are impactful to me. Joe: And it's the impactfulness I think that is most interesting. I think that with success and some of the things that we do, and you do, and Scott does and Mike Jackness another friend in common it's A. being a good human and helping people. There's peace of mind that you get with money in your bank account but there's pure joy, satisfaction, and other things that are so intangible by helping others and having people come up to you like that and say what you've created has changed my life, what you did changed my life, what you said, the way you helped me change my life and very impactful stuff. Greg: Yeah very much so and if you would have kind of—if I would really listen to this podcast not that long ago, just like 4 or 5 years ago, I would've been able to really like understand that at all. I don't think—at the time this seems like super shallow. But if I'm just being honest with myself, my only goal was just to make money. And the reason that was my goal at the time is like that's how I kind of like saw freedom. It's like okay I can quit my job or I have the security so I don't have to worry about it or I was always like—my 1st few years being an entrepreneur I was always so scared. [inaudible 00:20:59.8] like go back and get a job. Now it's like the most terrifying thing to me. So honestly—when I'm being honest with myself all I cared about was like the money at the time. And then kind of like as I felt like I was financially secure and kind of like no longer have those worries. That's when you're going to start asking yourself those questions like man what really does bring me the most happiness or like the most joy? And for me helping entrepreneurs is like very, very high on the list if not the top thing. So I would do these different case studies or free educational piece of content or whatever else. And people often say to me why are you giving all this away for free or why are you doing this it's only creating more competition for you or whatever else. And when I hear that it would just remind me of like yeah okay 5 years ago I would have said the same thing. I wouldn't have understood it but then I talk to these other people who are like successful entrepreneurs or whoever else and they're the ones who kind of like can understand that a lot better. It's like okay once you get to a certain point it's about okay what really brings you a lot of joy in your life, a lot of happiness and you want to optimize for doing those things. Joe: Yeah and that free content and everything you're giving it away for free but you're helping people and if you're in this for the long term it's going to come back around. And I think you're in this for a long term. Absolutely, yeah. Some of the things that you've done over the past are overflowing into other things that you have ventured into. And I want to talk about a couple of them. You and a group of friends have started something called the 5 Minute Pitch. I took a look at an episode or 2 of that. I've talked to Mike about it. I saw the one with Andrew from ECF on it. Do you want to talk about what 5 Minute Pitch is and how you're helping entrepreneurs? Greg: Yeah. So this kind of goes back to what brings me joy. And helping entrepreneurs is definitely one of them. It's also fun to hang out with other people I enjoy being around. So this was like a nice mixture of the 2. 5 Minute Pitch is shark tank style pitch competition where anyone with a small internet business who hasn't raised institutional money is eligible to pitch; so different people with all different types of businesses. Everything from a small software business to an e-commerce store to just developing a product and selling it through Instagram ads or whatever else. They pitch their business to myself and 4 other judges. And at the end of the season, the season actually ends in just a few weeks; we're giving the winner a $50,000 prize. They don't have to give up any equity in their business or anything. It's just prize money to help grow. So yeah it was a—we've only done one season of it. It was really fun and we'll probably do a few more seasons in the future. Joe: That's great now everybody that listens to the podcast knows that we don't pitch products and services. But I think that they all should look closely at Jungle Scout and 5 Minute Pitch. Take a look at it if you've got a product that's just taking off and you want to get more into the e-commerce world. Take a look maybe you could be on season 2. Who is Kevin O'Leary in the 5 Minute Pitch? Who's—and have you said you're dead to me to anybody? Greg: You know I've been watching some Shark Tank before thinking about these different lines and me and most of the other judges I think most of us are all just a little too nice to be Kevin O'Leary; which in results probably makes it a bit worse for television. But we're kind of just ourselves on the show. Joe: We had the founder of Happy Feet on the podcast a few weeks ago and he said that—and he did a deal with Robert on Shark Tank. Greg: Okay. Joe: He said that when you're on shark—and I've talked to 5 or 6 people over the years that have been on, when you're on Shark Tank when you finish up they make you go sit with a psychiatrist for an hour. You can't leave 10 minutes n. It's at least for an hour because they want to make sure that you're not going to kill yourself because of some of the things that some people have said about your business; so pretty rough. Alright so let's talk about something else I looked at before we jumped on the podcast here and that is the Jungle Scout scholar; JS scholar. What are you doing there man? Greg: Yeah. So it's just a scholarship program that we started just over the years I'm thinking of different ways and kind of like give back to the communities especially things I'm kind of passionate about. So that's one that we're doing. Each semester we're giving a scholarship to someone who's kind of like in business school or maybe computer sciences or something in that area who also has kind of like an entrepreneurial spirit. So it's pretty easy. Just create a little short video and submit it. Each semester we choose someone to give the scholarship to. And then with that also comes some mentorship for me to help them get their business off the ground. Joe: That's awesome. I mean it really is. A lot of people talk about giving back and helping others, young entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs themselves but you're actually doing it. How long have you been doing that program? Greg: I think we've given away 5 scholarships now so that would be about 2 ½ years I've been doing it. So it's cool. Joe: That's impressive. Now I'm going to talk to my 17 year old when we're off. He's applying to college next year and— Greg: Tell him to apply. Joe: He is not going to business school. He'll probably be an engineer or maybe an art student, who knows we're still working that stuff out. They change their minds a lot. They really do. Greg: Yeah I do too. Joe: I did as well. And we've actually had people that have put their kids through college and then bought them a business when they graduated which is very interesting. It's almost like they shouldn't have spent that's $200,000 on college [inaudible 00:26:30.4] part of the business but kids get to grow up a little bit. What's down the road, what's in the future for Jungle Scout? What things are you going to add that are going to help those 200,000 plus subscribers and fend off some of the competition down the road? Greg: Yeah we have quite a few product initiatives going on right now. We've really grown our product team a lot over the past 6, 12 months. We're going to really build out a lot of this stuff but most of it is around kind of what I spoke about earlier about right now the Jungle has got a tool at least that gets you up to until you launched your product on Amazon. We have a few other businesses that we have acquired or built over the years but we're kind of combining those into a singular tool. So by the end of the year, the additional functionality you can expect is like the stuff from those other tools. So helping you manage your business in our PPC and optimize it; all these different areas is kind of like what we're building in this year in 2019. Joe: That's great I know that finding a great PPC company is often hard for folks, managing products we've got folks that buy businesses and just—I am looking for a great company that managed the entire thing for me so that's fantastic. One of the biggest issues people have Greg as you probably know is sourcing great products. Is that down the road or is that part of Jungle Scout at all now? Greg: Yeah so we actually just released—so our newest feature is actually probably the one I'm most proud of called supplier database. And we actually just released this like a month ago. So it's pretty cool Joe. So we—I guess you've seen this too that a lot of people have a lot of problems finding high quality suppliers. And I did too. And I also found like this was one of the biggest pain points of our audience. And when I really started to get into this, it's like okay what's the problem here because there are tons of factories on Alibaba. That's how I used to find all my factories, just on Alibaba. There's tons of them and what it really comes down to is it wasn't like a shortage of factories or finding the factories or being able to communicate with them what it really came down to was finding a quality factory and vetting the factory before you did a production run. So like most of the horror stories that you hear are that the quality didn't come out as expected or every once in a while you hear a horror story about someone who a factory just ran off with someone's money or whatever else. And so there's a few ways I used to try to combat this; one was ordering a sample at a time. However, the problem is that when you're only ordering one unit, of course, they're going to give you the nicest one. They're going to like polish that one up extra but it's like oh can I do that on a production run of a 1,000 or 2,000 units and that's oftentimes not the case. So that was one way I tried to combat it. The other way was to get an inspection once the production run was finished. The problem there is when it didn't meet the quality sometimes you weren't able to get them to really fix what you wanted or is like sometimes a little bit too late at that point. So anyway the ways to try to combat it, the list was long but [inaudible 00:29:30.6] that effective. So what we did is we collected all of the US import trade data. So when you import something in the US you file some paperwork, yo give it to the government, and through this law called the Freedom of Information Act in the US, we're able to get access to that data. We put it into a database. We made it easy to filter and search through. And the way that it's able to solve this quality problem is you're able to find factories on there, you're able to see who their customers are, how often they import into the US, and how long they've been importing to US, the quantities; a number of different factors like that. So that's really cool but we kind of took it one step further by being able to essentially search for any Amazon product or any brand on Amazon in here and you could find out who are their factories. Joe: Holy cow, that's amazing and almost offensive in some ways. I would think if you're an Amazon seller and you're able to scrape through their manufacturers. That's pretty incredible. Greg: Yeah it's really incredible. It's like the old way for me of finding factories was when I found product idea I went to Alibaba, order a bunch of samples, whatever else. My new way of finding factories is like when I find something that I want to sell, and like sitting next to me right here is a little espresso. So if I want to sell espresso cups, I would just go to Amazon, I would search for espresso cups, I would see who gets the highest ratings. So who has like 5 out of 5 stars with a whole bunch of reviews and I just find their factory. Because then like right away then you know that there's a high quality factory. Joe: And you did that through sheer tenacity and hard work. What you're doing at the Jungle Scout is you're giving a tool to do it for them. Greg: Yeah. That what— Greg: And that's what I do now; I just who the factory is of the highest quality product on Amazon and I just contact them and I buy from them. So it's a much easier way to do it. Joe: Wow that's amazing; that's scary and amazing. Still, though I think for those that are going oh my God I'm never going to sell on Amazon because of that; it's that moat that you build around with thousands of reviews. I did a valuation today for something that is a fairly competitive it's in a very competitive niche but they've guy 17,000 reviews and the closest one has maybe like 1,100. That's an enormous gap in reviews. So there's a pretty big moat there. Greg: Right, and you know this Joe it's—when we launched this there was definitely—we probably got a dozen emails of like really pissed off people because now everyone can find out who their factory is. But you realize this because you deal with people who are buying business all the time but it takes a lot more than just knowing a factory to create a successful business, right? [inaudible 00:32:09.4] like a lot of other steps. Joe: A ton of a lot. Greg: So just because people can find out who your factory is that doesn't mean that they can just copy your whole business. There's a lot more steps to it than that so I wouldn't be too worried about it. We actually saw this exact same thing when I originally launched Jungle Scout because prior to Jungle Scout no one knew how well products on Amazon were selling. And now all of a sudden you could see how well every product on Amazon sold. So same thing I got like dozens of people emailing me pissed off because I was telling the whole world about how well their products were selling on Amazon. Joe: That was—they were pissed off shortly before they subscribed probably though, right? Greg: Right. So we've kind of seen a little bit of a similar thing with the supplier database. And then to your exact most people are like wow, well I'd rather have all this data and the whole world be able to know who my factory was than this type of thing not exist out there. Joe: Yeah I hate you but I'm going to give you my money every month because you created a great product. That's awesome; fantastic. I didn't know that it went to that depth and level where you can find the products manufacturer. That's incredible. Alright, Greg, we're running out of time, obviously, Jungle Scout is how do they find it? JungleScout.com? Greg: Yeah JungleScout.com if you're not familiar with it you can read up all about it on the website. If you're interested in just selling on Amazon too, I might be a little bit biased but I think we have like the best educational content out there and it's all for free. You can find all of it under the free resources section of the website. So any format you like learning in whether that's on audio or video or written it's all on there. There's a lot of—a bunch of end up guides. We do this thing called the Million Dollar Case Study where we launched 4 products from start to finish. You get to see the products and everything along the journey. So yeah that's tons of stuff on there if you just [inaudible 00:33:52.5] on Amazon too. Joe: Fantastic; a great educational tool and a great product. And for those out there with kids that are going to college in the next couple of years how do they get to the JS Scholarship or scholar site? Greg: JungleScout.com/jungle-scholar and you can find in the footer of the website too. Joe: I got it. I found it on LinkedIn. And then there's the 5 Minute Pitches well we'll put all this in the show notes as well. Greg Mercer, thank you very much for spending time with us. I know you're a very busy guy. I appreciate it. Greg: Thanks again. I'm glad I'm here. Take care. Links and Resources: Jungle Scout Jungle Scholar The 5 Minute Pitch

Today we're joined by Scott Voelker of The Amazing Seller podcast. Scotty's not just a personal friend but a comrade-in-arms in a number of ecommerce projects, the most recent being season one of the 5 Minute Pitch along with Steve Chou and Greg Mercer. Scott and I have many similarities when it comes to our background and how we've grown our respective ecommerce businesses. So, after hearing his presentation on ecommerce business sustainability at this year's Sellers Summit, I got him on the show solo. Not everything works forever Ecommerce is a dynamic industry. It's constantly evolving according to the latest market trends and who's dominating it (big “bad” Amazon). Strategies that may have worked will lose their edge eventually. As Scott puts it, “Things that worked yesterday may not necessarily work today”. Innovation and a good understanding of the market are crucial for being successful long-term. Grab their attention “Attention is the new currency.” Speaking of marketplaces, what we've found that does work is capturing the market's attention. How do you that? By being genuine and bringing something valuable to the table. After you've identified a target market, you'll need to create a plan that grabs and sustains their attention. This usually involves putting out content in some form or another. But offering valuable content is only half of the picture. You also need to establish that trust with your audience. Do so by proving your expertise in the subject and your willingness to guide people who may not experts themselves, but are working towards getting on that level. Tune in to the full podcast episode for more insights on how you and your brand can navigate the changing tides of ecommerce and remain relevant in the years to come. And check out the resources section of this page for more information on an ecommerce event Scotty's putting together in September.   We have a book and we're giving it away for FREE. If you want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots, get yours here. Want to get advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast?  Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Join season two of the 5 MInute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form. Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling! Resources Brand Accelerator Live 2019 E187: How to Save on High-Quality Content for SEO – Under the Hood with Sebastien Taché

Hosts can talk faster than they can type. Followers can listen while doing any number of other tasks. A business that comes with a podcast following of 15,000 is more valuable than one that comes with a 35,000-person email list. Podcasts are pretty hard to get wrong. They can diminish the laborious reading and writing aspects of emails and blogs by automatically offering content within the conversations with guests. Today we are talking with podcasting expert Craig Hewitt about ways that adding a podcast to your business can be beneficial both for a recent acquisition and a potential sale. Craig is the owner of Podcast Motor, a company that handles the end to end podcast production process for businesses. He's an entrepreneur in the podcast space, running two service companies and producing 35 podcasts. He believes, and we here at Quiet Light agree, that a good podcast is a great tool for building your business. Episode Highlights: How podcasts differ from blogs. Where podcasters should get started. Whether they need all the "stuff" to get up and running. Why podcasters use external services to create their episodes. Craig's solution for launching a podcast quickly and easily. Challenges hosts face in getting started and putting themselves out there. Why it's important to find the right guests and create relevant conversations for your business. How podcasting can be a fit for different types of businesses. Ways starting a podcast with a newly acquired business can help promote ownership. Why businesses need fewer followers for a podcast than for a blog. How a podcast can create repurposable content. Ways a podcast can benefit a business you are getting ready to sell. Whether podcasts are transferable. The basic technical tools you need to get started. How long you should test for success. Transcription: Joe: So Mark today's episode we're going to talk about why someone should start a podcast. Stutter, stutter, stutter, Chris edit that. Mark: Chris don't edit that just keep that in there. Joe: Yes let's keep it in because folks this is about podcasting and I was going to ask Mark a question … oh, man, did somebody put something in my coffee this morning [inaudible 00:01:34.2] in my coffee … it's a Northern thing. Do you have to be well spoken, intelligent, and an expert on the subject matter to start a podcast? Of course, the key is to have a successful podcast to build an audience and a brand and a reputation but what do you think? Do you have to have all of that to really begin? Mark: No absolutely not. And look at the risk of narrowcasting and just talking about what we're doing here which is running a podcast, I thought it would be interesting to have Craig Hewitt on the podcast here. Craig owns PodcastMotor. They do the editing for all of the Quiet Light Podcast episodes. He also has a podcast hosting service Castos.com which he's recently started. He's an entrepreneur cut of the same cloth that all of us are made of. He likes to start, he likes to buy, he likes to grow businesses and living in France actually. He's an expat living in France so a pretty cool backstory there which unfortunately we didn't have time to get into. But I wanted to talk to him about why anyone who's out there looking to buy or even grow your business and create something really unique and special might want to consider adding podcasting to the mix. And look I get it we're looking a little bit at our own experience here and how beneficial a podcast … the Quiet Light podcast has been at Quiet Light brokerage, but I asked Craig this question. Joe, I'm going to ask you and put you on the spot here again like I do on a third of these intros I try and ask you a question that we didn't prep for. If you're looking at a business for sale and it's got 30,000 e-mail subscribers, okay and that's one option and then there's another business in exact same niche but they have 15,000 podcast downloads per month, where do you put more value in your opinion? Joe: Oh without a doubt on the 15,000 because those people are listening. They're hearing your voice and they feel like they know you already. We've gone to events where people have come up and said hello and they joke and they say I feel like I know yo. I've heard Mike Jackness talk about that as well. But I think the number one thing that this podcast has done for us … and John Corcoran was a guest on the podcast as well where we talked about networking and how important it is to a business. And I think if you're a business owner, if you're launching your own products, if you're a SaaS product owner, you just look to prior examples of huge podcast success like Michael Jackness or Scott Voelker for instance. Scott has got a quarter of a million people that listen to him every month. You network and learn things from the people that you network with to grow your business and grow your brand and I think it's invaluable and it blows away the e-mail. Although the e-mail is something specific and different because you're probably trying to sell a product right then and there, I think on a podcast you're talking about the bigger picture and your brand. If you're a SaaS business owner I think it's a great idea because you can talk about what updates you've got to your product and the market in general. But I love the podcasting and obviously, I'm not very well spoken or eloquent so if we can do it anybody can. Mark: That's right. So this is a bit of an advertisement for starting a podcast and I feel confident in doing this because I know a lot of people out there probably will listen to this and won't start a podcast. You'll think about the technical challenges, you'll think about the fact that your voice has to be out there and Craig and I go over this. There is an element of fear because you're a little bit more intimate with your audience when you have a podcast. There's a third dimension that gets added, right? When you are just writing a blog post it's very two dimensional, you're words are out there, you can go back and edit it whenever you want, people don't hear your tone … your voice, they don't hear you screw up because you get to go and edit it. And of course you can edit a podcast but there's still … it's still you, a little bit more real and raw. So I know a lot of people are going to listen to this and not start podcast but I'm going to make a pitch to just say look if you're trying to build something unique, if you're trying to build something valuable, if you're trying to grow your existing business with the [inaudible 00:05:24.7] towards selling it down the road, there is some value to starting up a podcast which is going to make it different if you are able to grow a good sizable audience. And I think in the 11 years we've done Quiet Light Brokerage I can't think of a single business that we have sold that actually came with a podcast attached to it. Joe: I don't think I've ever had one. And as far as return on investment I would think that the podcast and the cost associated with it, the ROI would be huge and probably not measurable; an invaluable. But one other thing look this is we've got Craig from the podcast company that manages ours but we've talked to lots of people like Taz from the Amazon Entrepreneur. He launched his podcast, does two a week and he does it all himself. So it's possible to do it for very little or nothing at all if that's … if it's a budgetary problem and you still want to get started. Mark: All right let's hear it directly from somebody who's been in the podcasting niche for a long time. He knows all … a ton of what he's talking about, Craig Hewitt. Let's get to it and cover this topic and I'll hopefully inspire maybe one or two of you guys out there to go ahead and start a podcast with your business. Mark: Hello Craig welcome to the Quiet Light podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Craig: Hey Mark thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Mark: All right you and I know each other from a ways back at Rhodium; do you remember the … I don't remember when we met each other at Rhodium, do you? Craig: Gosh yeah. Like I'm optimistic with my time projections these days I want to say it's three years but it might be four years ago. It will be four years in April probably yeah. Mark: All right my wife does this thing I call it Megan math where she'll … something would be 2 months away and she'll somehow compress that down to like just two weeks away. Craig: Yeah [inaudible 00:07:06.4] great exactly. Mark: Again full disclosure and I'm sure I probably said this in the intro. We always do the intros after … we record the intros after we record the interviews themselves but I'm sure I will say this just out of full disclosure I do pay you professionally. You have been doing the editing … probably it's your group that has been doing the editing for the Quiet Light podcast so thank you for that. Craig: No it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure, yup. Mark: Awesome, all right so we're going to talk about podcasting today and whether or not somebody should consider adding it to a business. And I obviously with Quiet Light I want to focus a little bit on does it make sense to add on to an acquisition like if you buy a business, does it make sense to add that on? What's involved in starting up a podcast? What are the impacts that you might see? And I also want to … if there's time allowing probably talk about the personalized aspect of podcasts and how that's going to affect the buying and selling of businesses as well. We can all just talk a little bit about SaaS. I know you have some SaaS work as well which could be an interesting thing to get into as well. But let's start off real quick with your background and your history and kind of how you came into doing what you're doing. Craig: Yeah so we know each other through kind of why my first successful online business and really the way I escaped the rat race of the professional kind of corporate world which is called PodcastMotor. So PodcastMotor is a product tied service that does podcast editing and production, really kind of like end to end everything from Mark records an episode, sticks it in Dropbox and an episode shows up in iTunes a week later. We really try to take care of every aspect of that whole process for our customers. And that business has been going since … it just turned four this year so a couple of months ago. So we've been doing it a long time in the podcasting world. And we have about 35 customers that we service on a regular basis. So weekly or every other week that they have a podcast come out. About two years ago I acquired a WordPress plugin also in the podcasting space called seriously simple podcasting. And on top of that, we built a podcast hosting platform that we now call Castos. So I run two different businesses in the podcasting space and it all happened just by chance. To be honest I started a podcast … jeez, four and a half years ago I guess and saw it really quickly like a lot of people that podcasting is really difficult. There's a lot of nuts and bolts and technical stuff and gear and all this junk that you need to start a podcast as opposed to like a blog where you just get a WordPress site and a keyboard or your iPhone and you could start blogging as good as anybody else. Podcasting there's a technique and gear and equipment and all this stuff that you have to have to be decent. And then to be really good is a whole other level. So we started offering the PodcastMotor service based on me seeing that pain I guess. Mark: Yeah and I don't want to scare people right at the gate but let's get into that kind of a scary different world of podcasting because it is a little bit different. Let's start with just the hosting side and you talk about Castos your podcast hosting service. Isn't it enough to just have a regular website? I mean I think one of the things that was confusing to me with podcasting when we got into it before we started the Quiet Light podcast was well why do I need all this stuff? Why do I need Libsyn? Why do I need all these other things? Why are we … why do podcasters use these extra services? And what are some of things that if somebody is thinking about podcasting what do they need to consider from a technological standpoint outside of the equipment just from the webhosting setup, the technical setup? Craig: Yeah so the logic around having a dedicated media hosting platform with you know hear, Libsyn, and SoundCloud, and Castos or whatever, the idea there is so you have a hopefully a very popular podcast and you have thousands of people downloading your podcast every Tuesday morning when it comes out right? Mark: Just like the Quiet Light podcast, thousands and— Craig: Yeah okay so thousands of people listening to your podcast and downloading this 60, 80 megabyte file every Tuesday morning. If you're a business like all of your customers are and a lot of ours the last thing you want is this enormous strain on your web server on Tuesday morning when customers are coming to your site and trying to buy your stuff or schedule a meeting or something like that because both the streaming and download of the podcast will be bad. And your website will at least be very slow if not crash. So you separate the resource strain from podcasting and serving up your website and have a dedicated hosting platform just for those audio files and let your website run on you know WP engine or flywheel or wherever it's running so that the two aren't using the same resource. That's kind of the logic around why you needed a dedicated media hosting platform. It's just like you don't put your video files under use Wistia or something like that. It's the same kind of idea. Mark: All right exactly. Okay so there's this whole other technological world with podcasting and then there's also the equipment side of it. And then there's the editing side of podcasting as well. Craig: Yeah. Mark: And then there's the distribution to the different podcast networks. And we're kind of jumping on the deep end or I guess we'll swim to the shallow end because I'm going to talk about listing the praises of podcasting here in a little bit. And specifically as kind of a leading tease here for anyone listening why I think it's a really, really good idea for any acquisition that you do, any business that you're looking at to potentially acquire to consider adding a podcast and potentially even on the sell side as well. But let's talk about the setup here a little bit as well and the equipment. Now I've got as you can probably see from the video that you can see and we do these podcast over video is just a little more personal. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I got the road podcaster and I got like three other mics back there as well. [inaudible 00:12:52.1] and everything else. And you, you got I see a pop screen of yours, there's pop screens, there's mics, there's the Vulcan power stuff, it's a whole different world, isn't it? Craig: Yeah I mean so it is totally a different world and this is the bad scary thing about podcasting is that there's more opinions and resources out there than are necessary honestly. And there's so much information that so many people get scared and they go and read five or six different articles just about the best podcasting mic and what web … what podcast hosting platform to use and there's everyone has an opinion about that and you know how long should you're episodes be and blah, blah, blah. Do you need a pop filter? Do you need a boom mount? Do you need all this stuff and so actually we created a resource to kind of counteract this and we call it launch in a week. And the idea is we're going to give you like one or two options not like all these million things out there that all these other resources give you is like they create the analysis or paralysis by analysis. So we … so castos.com/launch takes you to launch in a week and we give you like in a week seven day, seven e-mails and videos exactly what you need to launch a podcast to dispel a lot of that over information and misinformation that's out there a little bit. Like microphones I only recommend two microphones you know it's like this one that I'm using Audio Technica ATR2100 and another one is called the Shure SM7B. That's a really really really good mic. This one is $65 that one is about $500. And so it's like kind of whatever you feel like you want or need. We try to do a lot of that like you can do this or this and don't overthink any of it because you can get in way over your head. And the unfortunate thing is a lot of people never get started because they just think so much about all this stuff. Mark: All right let's talk about that point because I think this is the biggest obstacle to podcasting right? With writing a blog you can put it out there and you can get it up and going. Everybody knows how to write something even if it's not very good but there doesn't seem to be as much of a barrier to getting started. Maybe it's because of the technical challenge but I think there's also a mental challenge of getting out there. And I know for a podcast standpoint we toss around the idea forever. I actually had a false start at starting the Quiet Light podcast and I think I recorded three episodes, launched two, and then stopped because I didn't record enough episodes. I think one of the challenges people have is the idea of being out there and trying to get this audio presentation perfect from the get go. But like you said just get out there and start. You have to actually start doing it. Craig: Yeah I mean I think part of it is with writing you can write a blog post and save it come back two days later and edit it and tweak it and you haven't even be published by someone else on your team if you want maybe it's your name it's not associated with it. But like right now you and I are seeing and talking to each other and like covering a lot of the senses all at one time. And when you're podcasting your literally in someone's ear for 45 minutes every week or whatever it is. So I think it's just the senses that you're covering and the emotional connection you crave with somebody which is why it's so great if you can do it and get it right. But it's also why it's so scary to just get started and overcome some of this fear of putting yourself out there. You know I think about … I've done a little bit of video work and it's a lot harder because then you have to get the voice and the physical kind of presentation right the first time and there's no editing. You can't just edit out a flub in a video it looks horrible. And so I think in a way if you're already doing video podcasting is so easy because you can just cut it up a million ways from Sunday and it's no big deal. But it is so much harder than writing. Mark: Yeah and I think one of the other obstacles that we run into is written content can be repurposed in so many ways right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: And there's different focuses that we can really measure written content from an SEO standpoint. So you can definitely say hey I'm going to optimize for this keyword. And I know I'm going to get this keyword density out there and then I can actually turn this into a downloadable white paper. And I can go out and I can maybe use the same sort of topic and write you know 10 different guest posts and get involvings. So there's that other benefit as well but you actually lead into one of the benefits and maybe this way you could [inaudible 00:17:18.0] to segue into that. And probably the number one reason that we started the Quiet Light podcast and the number one benefit that we've received from it is that personal touch that having a podcast creates. I'll tell you a funny story. You'll actually like this because you listen to our podcast by default from doing some editing. Craig: Of course. Mark: And I know you're not doing all the editing yourself but- Craig: No I do listen to the show though, yeah. Mark: Okay well here we go … thank you for that. That makes me feel better. So obviously Joe and I host the podcast and we were at Brand Builder's Summit. And somebody came up to our table at Brand Builder's Summit and said "hey it's Joe here" I'm like "ah no Joe is [inaudible 00:17:54.7] right now" and they go "oh man I really wanted to meet Joe, I absolutely love his podcast" I'm thinking "wow that's great you love Joe's podcast, I'm so glad that you love Joe's podcast" and he goes "yeah I know I was really hoping to meet Joe". And Walker was staying right next to me and goes "no this is Mark over here he also does the podcast" he goes "ah is Joe going to be back soon?" I'm like "yeah Joe will be back soon". Craig: That's wonderful, that's wonderful. Mark: But you know one of the things that this podcast has been able to do is it gets us in people's cars. It gets us in people's ears for a certain amount of time and it really breaks down some of that barrier that I think can happen when you're writing. Like you said it's very two dimensional. Craig: Oh yeah. Mark: It's the words on a page, you don't have the voice of the person in your head. This is … it's not as full-on as video but it's a little more personal. And I'm sure you've seen that a ton with what you're doing because I know you work mainly with businesses right? Craig: Oh yeah I mean for PodcastMotor all of our customers are businesses like yourselves. You know like small, medium size business and entrepreneurs, startups. And I think that the medium of podcasting is unique in two ways. One like we're having right now it's a conversation. It's not you on a video and your YouTube channel talking and everyone else is listening. That's not so helpful. And it's not so helpful in a very particular way when it comes to businesses and that is rapport building and networking. And this is like the secret sauce I think when it comes to like B2B podcasting is you have this podcast to reach a broader audience of buyers and sellers … of buyers maybe but really probably to get sellers in the door right? And so like for PodcastMotor we have a podcast. If we're going to go kind of strategically and think about who we're having on the podcast it's thought leaders in the podcasting like B2B podcasting space. So they can say wow you know I had this podcast with Craig last week, we talked for like an hour and he really knows his stuff. Dean my friend over here who runs a coaching business who wants to start a podcast should really talk to Craig because he really knows what he's doing. He can help him be successful. Like that really like micro networking opportunity that you have in interviewing a thought leader in your space on a podcast is not something you can measure by like download statistics or something like that. But for a lot of people should be the reason they do a podcast. It's not your listeners that you do the show for it selfishly a little bit is yourself and the networking ability that the podcasting medium allows for. Mark: Yeah I would agree 100%. And this is one of the main ancillary benefits that we received from the Quiet Light podcast. One of the biggest benefits is that it just keeps us in touch with people in a very personal way. And in some ways it's a little bit weird when people do come up to you and [inaudible 00:20:44.9]. Craig: Yeah. Mark: But I shouldn't listen to my voice that's weird but kind of cool at the same time. But that secondary benefit of that micro networking that you talk about I know we've had this happen actually recently we had Ezra Firestone on the podcast. And sure enough I had opened up my e-mail the other day and there's an e-mail from Ezra promoting his podcast episode with Joe, Joe's podcast. And I mean just think about that, I mean he's just one of the biggest Internet marketers out there right now promoting this one episode. And how many extra people are going to be exposed to the business, to us in general just because of that one episode. So this is definitely a benefit and might not be my number one goal but it's definitely one of those goals of the podcast is to be out there spreading our network for referrals. I think any referral based business that's out there this is a fantastic medium and probably a must that you should do is having some sort of a podcast if for nothing else to be able to bring in that network and grow that small network. Craig: So just to pile on there a little bit for folks who might be a little bit outside of the agency or consulting world so like starting from really high dollar and down to more transactional type businesses the other thing I think that podcasting does is it allows you to showcase publicly your knowledge and expertise. So if somebody sees you on another person's podcast they're going to say "wow Mark really knows what he's talking about when it comes to buying and selling businesses". It automatically boosts your credibility with that person if they're looking to do this thing down the road. Yeah, I think that's massive. It's kind of like your little online CV that you build along with your social media and YouTube and all this kind of stuff but podcasting should be a part of that for a lot of people. Mark: Well and that actually leads to my next question really well and that is what do you think about podcasting on the more just B2C side as somebody selling baby shoes online. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I mean how can podcasting fit into that fold … with that type of business? Craig: Yeah I mean there's really two … in my mind there's two ways to go and admittedly this is a bit outside of the wheel house of what we do at PodcastMotor but there's really two kind of schools of thought or areas that you would run into there. One is just hobbyists, right? And so like you're a hobbyist you like the Pittsburgh Penguins, you want to have a podcast about that. That's just a hobby and that's great but it also does the thing about like building your social proof in the world. And so you want to go do something with that later on. You have this bank of 200 episodes that you want to do something with. If you're thinking about like a B2C area I think that you can either provide useful content to … you have a show about being a parent, provide useful content to other parents about how to be a good parent, organic parenting and all this kind of stuff. Or you have what's called like sponsored content and this is where a company would pay a creative agency like I believe it's Pacific Media is the real big one in this to create a show like Serial. So Serial is the Gimlet Media podcast from a few years ago. They would create a podcast like that and it would just be you know this podcast is brought to you by Huggies Diapers or something like that. And it's this totally awesome show about parenting and motherhood or whatever but it's just sponsored by this B2C company. And you see more and more sponsored content out there these days where a business is saying look this is a massive branding opportunity for us. We're going to create this piece of content that we know our audience will love. It probably doesn't have a lot of like direct business impact, people are not going to go buy our diapers because of this podcast but they're going to know our name really well because every week the show they love the most has our name all over it. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. I also think of the episode we did with Mike Jackness from colorit.com and the show is on email marketing. So it had nothing to do with podcasting but we were talking about how often he was sending emails. They were sending emails to their subscribers every single day but the vast majority of what they're sending is ridiculously useful content that is not selling their clients in any way, their customers in any way. And the result of this is that people end up looking forward to communications from them. So I can imagine that impact as well if you have a B2C company and you're in this hobby, this niche, or you really have a very unified sort of product that you're selling. Or it can even be a type of service as well. You're growing an audience that is kind of a group of raving fans for what you're doing. And you're offering so much value that when you do offer that sale when you do go out there and promote something you have this group out there that's just super excited to hear from you. And that's a nice problem to have, right? Craig: Yup. Mark: Yeah all right let's talk a little bit about this from an acquisition standpoint. Obviously, we should bring this back into this and I want to talk about from an acquisition standpoint and also selling and we'll end with the selling question because I think there is a pretty significant question there. But on the acquisition side the one struggle I can see … I did an acquisition recently my guess and that's almost two years ago now and – Craig: It's not funny, math coming back in there. Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:25:57.8] absolutely, time flies too. And you and I have actually talked about the starting up a podcast on this acquisition. It's a little bit weird though you know like Quiet Light Brokerage has started … I own, I've kind of grown with it so I feel like I own it. It is a little bit weird to start a podcast with something that you don't own. But I wonder if there is almost a sense of growing ownership if you start building something on top of that like a podcast with an acquisition. Craig: Hmm. Mark: Kind of an open ended thought but I don't know if you've had any experience with that or any thoughts on that. Craig: Yeah I mean I think that … so I had not run into this personally like with some of our customers having acquired businesses that they didn't want to start a podcast around. But having acquired several businesses the one thing that I think is really important and often times really difficult is for an acquirer to really know the business model and the types of people that kind of live and breathe this product or space that you're in. And there is nothing better than to say I want to go interview the 50 best people in Instagram for kids whatever … whatever niche it is you know than a podcast. Mark: Instagram for kids sounds like it should have some predatory laws about it I'm just saying. Craig: Yeah sure whatever it is right … it's underwater basket weaving. I mean you interview the 50 best people on underwater basket weaving. You're going to know basically everything there is to know about the influencers and the things that really matter to people in that business. So for me it's like someone who is always looking to acquire businesses and kind of dabbling as like a serial entrepreneur if I was going to get into a business I didn't know a lot about lot about starting a blog or really continuing a blog would be really daunting because I … there's a lot of opportunity to waste a bunch of time and money there. You can write a bunch of articles about things people don't care about but it's really hard to have a podcast that's bad if you will in a space you don't know a lot about because you just go interview people and ask them interesting questions. And what they have to say is the content it's not what you have to say, it's what the people you have coming on the show. So I'd say for people looking to … who have acquired a business that might be a little out of their wheel house just start a podcast, interview the thought leaders in that space and you have like the nexus of all the really interesting content for your audience. And you as the new owner know exactly what's so important to everybody in that space. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to compare this actually to the blogging world because I went from the blogging world pretty heavily into the podcasting world almost exclusively now. Libby has been writing blog posts on every one of our podcast episodes so we can keep up with some blog content. But in the blogging world, you would have to sit down. You would have to come up with your own idea for a blog topic. You would have to research that topic. And then you would have to write on that topic. And the way blogs are going you have to write more and more and more. I was writing 1,500 to 2,500 word blog posts. I was doing four of those per month plus four outside of Quiet Light blog posts per month. So I was doing eight blog posts on average 2,000 words a piece. And then best practices after you publish that blog post you should go out and you should do outreach. So you should reach out to the influencers and say hey take a look at this and how easy is it for an influencer to ignore your e-mail or give it a cursory look. I'd flip this around for this I'm doing my research right now on this interview with you I'm reaching out to you and you're an influencer on the podcasting world so I already got my influencer locked in as well. We're getting great content at the same time. It kind of brings all of this into one hopefully easily digestible format. So that's a huge benefit I think as well. And when you're looking at getting into a space like you said trying to network and get to know the influencers in a space that you don't know is one of the biggest challenges. And having a podcast I'll tell you what when I ask people to be on the podcast I'd get one of two reactions. One is no I'm super shy I don't want to do it. And two is yeah that sounds great because who doesn't want to be in front of a big audience and get heard. People like to be on podcasts. They'd like to think that they're important enough to be interviewed. Craig: They want to take their Joe Rogan. Mark: Exactly even though … you know I'm not going to tell them that there's like three people that listen to the Quiet Light podcast but they're still excited. Craig: So you brought up two things I really want to touch on quickly. One is three people listening to the Quiet Light podcast, one is not true right? But in a B2B sense and even a B2C sense in your niche, the number of people listening to your show doesn't matter at all. So if you have a hundred people listening to your podcast that is great. Those are a hundred really passionate people about what you have to say. As opposed to a hundred people reading a blog post that has almost no impact whatever. You need tens of thousands of people reading a blog post for it to really be impactful in the in the greater sense. But 100 people in your niche listening about your podcast is fantastic. So they're really high intent people for whatever your business purpose is. The other thing is talking about repurposing content. I think podcasting has the ability to repurpose content really easily right? We're doing audio, we're doing video, it will be created in to show notes for a blog post, you have it transcribed, you can syndicate the video to YouTube. Like you can do all of these things with one … what we're going to talk for 45 minutes today piece of investment and your time and you have a team or someone do all of the extra work to produce all that for you and you have two or three or four pieces of content you can syndicate to everywhere that people consume this media. As opposed to writing a blog post it can ever only ever be in your blog. You can't go create a podcast out of a blog [inaudible 00:31:29.4] could but that's just kind of silly. Mark: Right and you're absolutely right as far as the repurposing content. Again if people haven't checked out in a quick plug in the Quiet Light brokerage blog, I think it was last fall we brought on [inaudible 00:31:41.3] and she listens to every one of these podcasts. Hi, Libby thanks for all the work you're doing. And she's putting together awesome blog posts like I've been reading these myself and she's taking the information that we're picking up in the podcasts and then she's going out and supplementing it with outside research as well by putting together a full on blog post with quotes from the blog post as well but bringing out a slightly different narrative than what we cover in this this conversation. It's a great way to be able to repurpose this content and give it just a little extra layer and a little extra dimension. And so that is one way to repurpose the content. And again I can't emphasize this enough the amount of time it takes to do a podcast significantly less time than it takes to do the blogging side. Let's address the question of a podcast in a business that you hope to sell someday. And I think this is a question that is a little bit more difficult to answer here because we talk a lot … let me ask you this have you seen the Princess Bride? Craig: Yeah of course. I have an eight year old daughter, yup. Mark: Well I always like to say that getting a business prepared to sell is you have to follow the Dread Pirate Roberts rule right? You don't want to be actual Dread Pirate Roberts. It's the name that counts right? That's the quote from the movie; it's the name that counts. The actual Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired and living like a king in Patagonia. That's what we want to be able to do. We want to pass on the name of our business. We don't want to actually have to be tied to the business. Well, we just talked about podcasting, it's being in somebodies ear and being that personality in somebodies ear. And so from a standpoint of selling maybe, it's a little bit of a disadvantage on that when you go to sell. But I don't think it has to be a disadvantage but I'm going to put you in the uncomfortable spot here and see first have you thought about this much and what are your thoughts on it? Craig: Yeah so I guess two things; one, I know that podcast themselves have definitely been bought and sold more and more right? We're recording this in beginning of 2019, you hear more and more about people selling and buying podcast especially in a space. It's like buying and selling a blog in a space. If you're a business and you acquired this blog redirect it and then pour your content into your domain and you already have this audience that's seeing your brand. The same can be said for podcasting so people want to come in and buy a podcast in a space because it has a built in audience. I think it's a really good kind of audience and customer acquisition strategy for a business that already kind of exists and has their own podcast to look at selling the business and transferring the podcast to the new owner. I think that a lot of the standard knowledge and business process transfer things apply there. Like if you have a process around Mark how you identify the guests that you want to have and how you invite them and you send them a [inaudible 00:34:23.3] like an as a zoom thing in it and you have an outline you send them three days before and all this kind of stuff and you have a team behind it to edit and produce the podcast. Then someone buying your business that has a podcast in it is not nearly as daunting as just saying like I wing it every week. And the new owner is saying holy crap I can't imagine doing that. So I think that … I mean the truth is a podcast is not really hard. Like once you do a couple of them it's not really that hard. So giving the buyer of the business that would acquire this asset but kind of responsibility of a podcast, give them the tools to be successful and I think it's definitely a net win. The worst thing I can see though is you have a podcast and you have an audience and people that really enjoy and want to connect with you through the podcast and the acquirer comes in and drops the ball, obviously, a big negative. So if people have podcasts and they're going to be selling their business or business with podcasts I would definitely make sure like the rest of the business like you said with the Dread Pirate Roberts thing it's like make sure that it's totally transferable and that the person's going to be successful. That intimate nature of the podcast I think can transfer from one person to another pretty easily. You know the new person is going to have some level of domain expertise and you'll love a different spin on the podcast and that's cool. Yeah, I think it's definitely a net win as long as the person is set up to be successful. Mark: Yeah and I would agree. And the other thing I would point to is that when talking about an exit strategy when looking at what you need to do to prepare a business for sale there's going to be this push and this pull on various factors of the business. And when you're looking at this, when you're looking at the business holistically it's always going to be better for you to build a strong, loyal, happy, faithful audience right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: That's way, way more valuable than anything else. And is there maybe a little bit of a demerit when it comes to having something like a podcast which may be tied to your voice. Yeah, okay there's … I think just being honest yeah I think there's going to be a little bit of concern about the transferability. But that can be addressed right? That can be addressed pretty easily. You can agree to do the podcast and co-host with the new owner for six months and have a very warm hand off that way. That would be a very natural way to do it. I think the benefits that a podcast adds in building an audience, let's think about this real quick here what is the value of an online business when we actually look at it and when we do all the tax returns and everything else on it we allocate most of the purchase price towards goodwill. The sort of nebulous who knows what it is that makes this business successful. Successful and having a podcast is really a big part of building that good will. So if you take the time and build a lot of good will through a podcast and that's a good source and driving avenue for customer acquisition within your business that's going to be a net plus in the grand scheme of the things. So I think people that are out there thinking about podcasting thinking well I don't want to start that because it's going to hurt the transferability of the business. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I wouldn't necessarily say don't do in fact I'll probably say the opposite especially if you have enough time. If you're looking at a year, two or three years before selling and you're able to build that audience I think it actually makes more sense because it's really hard to replicate that. Craig: Yeah the value you can get in those two years is so much more than the potential drawback of the new owner flubbing it and your audience being upset which is basically the worst thing that could happen right? Mark: You're totally biased in this but I'm going to ask you this question right now. If I could give you a business with 30,000 e-mail subscribers or a business with 15,000 podcast listeners what would you take? Craig: Yeah I mean the podcast listeners are going to engage with your message a lot more. You probably also would get all of them on an email list so you're already halfway there to having both. I mean you're literally … and we say it all the time, you're literally in someone's ear creating like some kind of like different neural connection with those people. I get your e-mail; I read your e-mails fine. I hear you on the podcast; I hear you talking about your kids and the Dread Pirate Roberts and all these kind of stuff that like has a different level of meaning. And it is that personal stuff that in a situation where you're going to be transferring it to a new owner is a little different. But for the time that you have the business or you're looking in acquiring a business that has a podcast it is a huge benefit. Because a lot of people are scared, right? You didn't start the podcast for some period of time probably because you're like … I don't know this is an onerous task I don't know if I'm up for it right? I mean maybe I did sure like I didn't start a podcast because I was like I'm not going to talk into a microphone and then put it out on the Internet for anyone who wants to hear it to hear because I sound like an idiot right? Like a lot of people don't like the sound of their voice and you just have to get over that stuff because the net is such a huge win. Mark: Yeah. Craig: Think about like you're at a conference now and like you know Mark I heard you on the podcast right? Mark: Right well it was that conference question that actually led us to do the podcast because we've been going to so many conferences and conferences are expensive. You have to fly out there for sponsoring and now that the sponsorship fees are ridiculously high and … but the benefit of being there in front of somebody and having those little jokes here and there or just playing… we'll play it a game. Well, we've done golf, we've done jenga, we've done darts … or something like darts it was actually sharp objects that we're throwing out our booth but that'd be dangerous they wouldn't let us do that. But that actual physical presence being there it really relaxed people so much more and allowed us to connect on more of a one on one basis. And that's why we started the podcast and sure enough, I think that happened. Given that choice between e-mail list and podcast, I would take the podcast audience as well. I think you can mobilize a podcast audience much faster. I think they're more engaged. I think they're more likely to quite literally listen to you but be more attentive to what you're saying. I think there's … that's just different [inaudible 00:40:07.3]. Craig: Yeah I would say like that one look at guys like you know Gary Vaynerchuk right or Pat Flynn or whoever that you look up to in the business and marketing world they all have podcasts right? So like that says something I think. The other thing is the volume of information that we are relaying in this episode is massive. Like … you know we transcribe episodes for customers a podcast and a typical you know 45 minute conversation is about 15 pages in a Google doc. Mark: Wow. Craig: So you're like how are you going to relay 15 pages of content to anybody ever? That's impossible, right? No one is ever going to read that blog post or email but they'll listen to that podcast every week. Mark: Yeah absolutely, in fact, I have our director of content marketing now Chris Moore who also listens to the podcast, hey Chris how are you doing? He's been going back through every one of our podcasts and pulling up quotes. And he was telling me just earlier this week about how much volume is there that we put together in what feels like a very short amount of time of doing this podcast. It is a ton of information. Craig: Something … a bit of a carrot I think for both the buy and sell side you know of your audience is you can bet your bottom that Google will be indexing audio very soon. Mark: That's a really nice tease. Craig: Oh you know the SEO impact of podcasting ya-da-da-da-da, you're going to create like show notes that are like 700 words or whatever for an hour long conversation. 100% guarantee that there will be an audio tab in Google whatever soon in the next couple of years. Mark: Yeah all right so let's go to this. We're almost up with our time I want to end up with what does somebody need at a bare minimum if they want to test a podcast for their business? How long … we don't have to get in the details of the equipment like we don't … I mean you want to give a couple of recommendations there and what are the basic things they should think about if they want to get and test it out for say two or three months and how long should they test it? Craig: Yeah so I think that the basics you need a microphone. I mentioned the two microphones before. If you really just want to test use the Apple ear buds they're actually quite good. Mark: They are actually. Yes, I'll second that actually, yeah. Craig: Get in a quiet place; don't have your kids running around or the train going by with the window open or something like that. Do some kind of environmental safety measures for the sound quality. You need something to record and edit the audio with. A tool that does both of those is called Audacity. It's open sourced and free in cross-platform so Windows or Mac. So you can record and edit with Audacity. Something to record with select a microphone or the Apple ear buds perfectly good and then you probably want something to store the files on so like a podcast hosting platform like a Castos or Libsyn, or SoundCloud and then you need to create what's called an RSS feed. And that is the thing that places like iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify read. And then share information about your podcast like as a whole like the title and description and image and all likely stuff and about each episode. That's kind of how podcasting works is you submit this RSS feed to these directories and the directories read the meta information about your show as well as information about each episode as it's published. So that's kind of a 20,000 foot view of podcasting. How many episodes? I think if you can't come up with 20 good guest interview or topics to cover or something like that then you have a couple of problems. But you probably shouldn't get into content generally but you really, really, really need to think about at least having a couple of episodes to launch with. Two, three, four something like that and but you really should have a general idea of what the first 20 episodes is going to look like. Mark: Yeah and I recommend actually recording probably about two months' worth just to start. If you're running a business as well I know like the recent first … my first go with Quiet Light podcast didn't really happen as I recorded three episodes and then I got busy and three weeks goes by really, really fast. And we do this here at Quiet Light we will get like a nice buffer of about two months but next you know we're staring down an empty set again of episodes. So get a nice buffer set up for that first trial and see what happens. It's a great medium and I'm going to do a plug for you just like you don't have to come across self-promotion. Honestly, your service makes this whole thing dead simple. Like I don't think about it at all, I don't think about what I'm doing. The only thing I thought about was what sort of graphic are we going to use for the podcast. Outside of that everything was set up, everything was done, the introduction was done. It makes it really, really simple. And so if you are looking to go this direction don't add a bunch more to your plate. Go out talk to PodcastMotor I recommend your guys service highly enough. Craig: Cool. Thanks so much that's great to hear. Mark: Hey thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. If you guys have questions feel free to reach out to Craig@podcastmotor. We'll put contact information in the show notes and yeah if you have any other questions or suggestions for podcast episodes send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com. Thanks, Craig. Craig: Thanks, Mark. Links and Resources: Podcast Motor Castos Contact Podcast Motor

At Quiet Light, we recently sent out a survey to our buyers to get insight into what they really want to learn about the buying and selling process. Today the hosts of Quiet Light are sharing the number one thing that first-time buyers want to know about getting the inside track to a deal. How do they break into the industry if they lack the experience in acquiring? This episode is just Joe and Mark, guest free, talking about breaking into the business for the first, second, or even the tenth time. They are sharing five things to keep in mind when shopping. There are a whole host of things you should do as well as things you should not do. Joe and Mark have built, bought, and sold businesses and have helped countless deals come to light, so you can trust that they learned all of this from hands-on experience! Episode Highlights: Give really good feedback. Review as many listing as possible in detail. Put time into the process. Make it a job. Prepare your financials. Get out on the conference circuit. Make a checklist of wants. Act quickly. Be likable to the buyer and the broker. Tell us what else are you doing. Be willing to overpay for a great business. Transcription: Mark: As you know we recently put out a survey for our buyers. And by the time this airs we're already going to have closed on that survey … that poll and we should have some really good conclusions. Nobody at Quiet Light other than myself knows the results of the polls yet. And I've been maniacally hitting refresh seeing what people are saying both the good and the bad and sometimes the ugly of what's being said. But I'll share one thing with you, Joe, right now that has come through that we've heard from a number of buyers and that is wanting to know how to get the inside track on deals. Basically feeling like there is this completely competitive disadvantage if they're a first time buyer. And there's some truth to this right? I mean if I've got three buyers looking at one of my deals and I have one that we've done four deals with already I'm probably going to prefer that buyer just because I already know them. They're a known quantity. We're going to be able to go through due diligence with them. We know what to expect. We know that they're going to not get cold feet at the 11th hour and so it's a problem for new buyers. How do you break into this industry? How do you break into your first acquisition? How do you get the best deals when you're competing against some guys that maybe have done three or four deals with us already? So this episode is containing no guests. We don't have any guests. It's just Joe and me talking about how to get the inside track to deals. And Joe I gave you an exercise at what … like 7 o'clock this morning I texted you and I told you to write some things down. Joe: You did. But first I want to say that to those listening that are first time buyers I've been at this for seven years, Mark's been at it for more than a decade, and I can only think of one buyer that has bought three listings from us. Maybe two actually if I think Shakil and 101. So there's only a handful of people like that that have bought more than three and then maybe a few more that have bought more than two. So I think the competitive advantage is in preparation and instilling confidence. We've had new buyers that beat repeat buyers. So I don't want anyone listening to feel like they're second in line, there's no way to break in. And that's the purpose of this podcast correct? So yes you gave me a task this morning. Thank you. I did not sleep last night and I know I'm doing the podcast and then you send me a text that says "Come up with a list of five things buyers can do to get the inside track on our listings." Thank you for that. Mark: You're welcome and I came up with a list a little late like 10 minutes ago of five things as well. And I had to think about it because five was just kind of an arbitrary number right? If we want to get really minute we could probably come up with 12. If we want to talk about the big points it's probably three or four. But I think that what you said is true. I hope people that are listening to this, especially first time buyers that maybe have been looking a while and feel like they don't have inside access to deals will end this episode knowing that there is more myth to that than reality. And you can be an established buyer by following some basic principles. We'll go over some of those today. So I think the reason I sent you that text Joe I thought it'd be kind of fun to compare lists to see if you and I would agree on what these five things are. And honestly, I made my list a little bit with the knowledge of what I thought you would be putting on your list. So I purposely tried to avoid things and also get a little bit more creative. Joe: I did the same. Oh my God, we're a match made in heaven. Mark: Well no doubt. Now we're not going to be hitting any of the key points because we're going to be avoiding the obvious. So if we missed the key points we'll include them at the end here. But I don't know how you want to go about this, do you want me to just go with my first and then you talk about your first? Joe: Yeah. Mark: All right the first is really simple. It's super simple. Give really good feedback. Like just give us some feedback on what you like and didn't like about a listing. It's really easy … if I'm talking to a buyer and you look at one of my listings and you don't like it, it doesn't fit, that's totally fine. Let me know. But in addition to letting me know maybe give me a call and say "Hey I really appreciate you showing this" now you don't have to say that but you can say "I took a look at it it's not a good fit. I was kind of looking for something more along these lines". The more conversations you have like that with someone like myself or Joe our anybody at Quiet Light Brokerage, the more that sticks out in our minds. Not only does it A. give us really good feedback on our listing which we can use to help get that listing sold but it also helps establish a relationship between us. And when we're bringing a business to market oftentimes we think about well who's a good fit? Who are some people that I know? And obviously, we can go into our database and start to do some matching. But if there's somebody that we know and we know they're a good fit yeah they're going to get … we're going to think of them, they're going to become like top of mind. We actually had this recently with a discussion we had internally at Quiet Light. Often when somebody is taking on a new client and they want some feedback on maybe the valuation or their approach or any strategy we'll have an internal discussion about it. We have just a generic email address and we all talk about it. And one of the brokers, Bryan was talking about a client that he was kind of worried about whether or not he'd able to find a good match for it and he wanted some feedback. And what immediately came to mind was one of our buyers Matt and we said maybe you should talk to Matt and see what he thinks about it and you know this will give him a chance to have an advance look at the listing. And sure enough, Bryan came back and said I already talked to him. And you know why two of us thought of him? Because we talk to him on a regular basis and he reaches out to us and we consider him a friend of the company. So that's my first item, give good feedback. Don't just say not interested. You can say thank you, you don't have to say thank you. I had somebody say that recently and said "thanks not for us". All right that's nice but that doesn't really help me that much. Tell me why. Explain to me why so that I can at least have that in my mind. Joe: And that's the building of the relationship. Whenever I get feedback … I ask for it every time, all of us do saying if it's not for you, let us know your thoughts on the listing. And the professional buyers … meaning they're just professional people, thoughtful people they send us that kind of email. And my response to them is "Understood. Thank you. We will find the right one for you eventually". If I've written that 500 times, I've written it a million times. I'm not sure if that math makes sense but I write it all the time. And I mean it because I know that it is an arduous search trying to find the right listing and these people are trying really hard to find it, they're reviewing the listings and it's a long, long process. So that goes to my first list of things to do here and these are in no particular sequence. But the first thing I wrote down and I've said this at least a thousand times over the last few years, review as many listings as possible in detail. And I wrote in detail in capital letters; IN DETAIL that's the most important thing. The more listings that you look at … not just the teaser that's on our website or a competitor's website; you can't really learn anything from that other than well that seems interesting but you don't really know what it is. You dive in, you look at it, and you learn what it is that you like about these listings and what you don't like about these listings. You learn what excites you about it and what scares you about it. And you begin to develop a sense for the right fit when it comes along. And that's really important because when that right fit does come along you're going to want to be able to act quickly and you've already looked at 300 listings. So you need to look at them in detail, digest the financials, look at the history of the business, look at all the products and the SKUs that are offered, and everything that we've prepared in our packages and really digest it and make your decision. And you're going to look at a lot of them. It's not an easy process. It's not a quick process. It takes a long time. One of the things that I love when I'm talking to … I'll say a new buyer, someone that I haven't spoken to before and they tell me they've been looking for a year. To me, that's great because they've gone through a lot of this and they've worked really hard to find that right listing. When someone says they've been looking for a couple of weeks or a month to me I know that they've got a longer road ahead of them and this is one of the things that I advise more often than anything else. Mark: It actually fits in really well with the next point that I had in my list and a point on there will just kind of piggyback on what you said are two just kind of general philosophies when you're talking about this process. Obviously, what you're talking about Joe it takes a lot of time and everything else I think to complement the first point I had and your point here would be two things. One, when you're looking for a business and you want to get that inside track be intentional about what you're doing. Intentionality right? So it's taking that time like you said to actually digest what you're looking at and reviewing it. I can't tell you how many times I deal with buyers or I talk to buyers who summarily dismiss a listing based on something which is frankly not an accurate assessment. But because they've already made that conclusion and despite the best efforts to be able to explain otherwise that conclusion becomes gospel truth to them and this is … they're missing out on some really good opportunities because of that. Or maybe they're not missing out, maybe they would say no otherwise but they will say no for more appropriate reasons than what they're saying no to. So that would be the first thing, intentionality. The second thing is … to piggyback on what I was in before is this is a relationship based business right? At the end of the day finding that really good business for sale is going to require some level of relationship and you need to find that blend. I think as internet entrepreneurs we love our processes. We love automation. We love efficiency. I mean that's the hallmark of what makes internet businesses so great. But you have to find that blend between slowing down and taking the time being intentional and having a process because there are a lot of listings out there that you can get a lot of deal flow coming your way. I know RJ over at 101 talks about how many deals they have looked and the numbers stay green. I mean it's well in the hundreds so you do have to have a process. But processes should not take away that intentional spending of time. And that leads into the point- Joe: Let me jump in I just want to say something in terms of the relationship Mark and being intentional. We're talking about the five things to do in between each of those five there are a number of things that you should not do. And one of them is in that relationship building don't send an email that says "I think you've overpriced this business it's only worth a 2x multiple, it's not for me". Because the 10 year old in me wants to send an email back to them saying "thanks for your feedback it's actually currently under LOI at this time at full price". And I've been in that situation a dozen times where I get a semi rude email on a listing that … it's been out for a week or two and some folks have looked at it we've had some conference calls and somebody sends me an email that says essentially "Joe you're a fool, you've overpriced this business. It's not worth merely what you and your client is saying it's worth." and then that very same day where just prior to that email it's under contract at full price. That little boy in me wants to reply to that person and say "thanks for your feedback it's actually under offer at full price". I say "thanks for your feedback we'll find the right one for you eventually" because I'm not 10 anymore but I want to. And so it is the relationship thing … again in between each of these five things to do, there's probably a half a dozen things not to do and that's really one of them. Mark: I admire your restraint. You know an appropriate response there … because look when it comes to valuations I tend to get very philosophical on this sort of stuff mainly because I've been around for 11 years and I've seen multiples that have went up way higher and I've seen a market where people weren't willing to pay more than 2.5, 2.6x on anything at all. Rather than saying you overpriced this business you can just simply say the price is too rich for me it's not a good fit at the price that it's at. That's fair. Well, you've got a price that makes sense for you. We get it. Don't tell us though that it's overpriced for the market. We listen to what every individual buyer is saying and if every … if all the individual buyers say not for me then yeah you're right. So I think that's a good point to have. All right so my second point, you're talking about going in detail. We're talking about making sure that you're talking to the broker and giving us some information about who you are, what you're looking for, why you like that, why you didn't like this. You might be hearing all of this and thinking that sounds like a ton of work. Yes, it is so that's my second point; make it a job. If your goal … when we did the survey by the way this … I'll give you another insight when we did the survey I'll tell everyone listening who took the survey a little secret. We actually had two surveys. One was just open ended questions the other one was very quantifiable information. Those that filled out the ones … the survey with very quantifiable information we asked how many businesses have you bought and the vast majority of our buyers have not bought their first business and are seeking their first acquisition within the first year. Okay, if your goal is to find a business within the next 12 months make that your job. This is what you get up in the morning, this is what you think about when you go to bed at night; how are you going to go about finding that business? Deal flow is difficult. When we put out a listing … I put out a listing recently that was 8 figures and we had almost a hundred inquiries within a couple of days. Okay, that's a substantial amount of inquiries on a single listing and that's not even close to what we get on something that's going to be in a more accessible price range. It's a competitive field so you have to make this your job. You have to dedicate the time to it. Read up on it. Subscribe to the podcast if this is the first one you're listening to it subscribe to the podcast because we're going to tell you how to do these things better and hopefully give you some insights. But read up on these materials, learn just like you do with any other thing and apply yourself to this in a full time way. Set up those processes to be able to filter through all of the noise and to be able to really take a look at the information in depth. So that's my second point; make it a job. Joe: And along those lines, my second point is prepare your financial approach. You can't get to the end point if you don't know what it is. If you're a cash buyer it's a little bit easier to understand what you're capable of stroking a check for but you also have to figure out okay if I'm buying an ecommerce business I have to buy that inventory too right? Okay is there a seller no possibility maybe on much, much larger listings but I'm over listening certainly not for the most part but that goes back to well … to whatever other points coming up. You need to prepare your financial approach if you're … if you have a limited amount of cash and you're going to do an SBA loan I love to hear from folks that are doing that that they have been pre-qualified for an SBA loan up to X dollars. And then they tell me the name of the lender. If it's somebody I don't know I'll reach out to them so we can build a relationship. If it's somebody I do know it's great, fantastic. I feel good about that because it's people in the network that we know and that we trust and that we know work hard to get deals done for buyers and sellers. If you're going to do get something under LOI now where somebody is going to be rolling over their 401k … I think it's called the ROBS. Mark's written an article on it "Quiet Light Brokerage and ROBS" and you'll find that article in Google. But that's another way to source funds to buy a business but it also … you need to understand the timelines there and how long it takes to do that. Mark, can you do a ROB without having the asset chosen that you'll purchase yet? Do you recall; yes or no? Mark: I don't recall, no. It's been a few years since I wrote that article. Joe: If you can … well read the article everyone if you can, which I think you can and you know you going to buy a business; do it, roll it over. Are you going to incur some cost up front that you're … if you're committing to buying an online business and making it a job like Mark says then you'll be prepared to buy that business because going back to my point number one you got to look as many listings as possible in great detail so that you're going to know the right listing when it comes along. And then you're going to want to be able to act fast because other people are too. It's not like you're making a quick decision here because you've been doing this for six to 12 months and looked at a hundred listings and you're prepared to act fast and you've got your financial ducks in a row. Because I can assure you if it's a great listing other buyers are looking at it and they've done this; they've prepared. It doesn't matter if it's all cash. It doesn't matter if you're rolling something over into a ROB and it doesn't matter if you're doing an SBA loan as long as you're prepared and instilling confidence in the broker and the seller of the business that you're capable of going from letter of intent all the way through to closing that's the most important thing be prepared. Mark: And to answer a question no you do not need to have the asset chosen before you convert to a ROBS. But take a look at the article; consult an expert on it because it's definitely a trickier thing to do. It's not something to do on your own I should say. You definitely want to have a consultant. All right, cool. All right I'm going to diverge from some of the traditional advice with my third point that I'm bringing out there. And it's not too crazy and it's pretty simple and that's get out on the conference circuit. More importantly get out on the conference circuit where brokers are going to be and you can meet them in person. And this comes back to this basic principle that this is a relationship based business. If I see you in person, if I have dinner with you you're going to be far more memorable than somebody who sends me an email once every two weeks saying "Hey do you have anything in this sector with this sort of EBIDTA?" you know what? I get a lot of those emails and I don't have a face to go with that email. It's very impersonal. If I see you at a conference and we spend a little bit of time together I get to know what you're doing. I get to know what your background is. That's way more memorable and honestly, the conference circuit is a great place to just meet all sorts of different connections that can help you. I know Stephen Spear who we've talked about from an SBA lending standpoint he's gone to a lot of these conferences. And think about this you're now dealing with people that you've met in person. Maybe an attorney, Shawn Hussein who shows up at a lot of the conferences, Stephen Spear who might end up helping you get an SBA loan. And then any of us here at Quiet Light Brokerage, you've seen all of us, you've met all of us, we've all talked, we've all joked, we've all had drinks together and everything else. It just helps pop of the mind and get to know everybody a little bit more closely. So that's just a very simple way to get some of that inside track. Joe: Let me add to that. For those folks that are spending a full time job on top of a full time job and pinching pennies to be able to buy this business, if you cannot do what Mark is suggesting which is a very very wise suggestion because there's nothing like human contact; emails doesn't work as well. This podcast is a great example. Mark had written amazing content for 10 years and then we started the podcast and we've been at it for just over a year now and people call us and they say "I feel like I know you already, I just listened before to your podcast". We never got that kind of call when someone said "I feel like I know you already, I just read four of your articles"; very different. So if you cannot go to the conferences and get that face to face contact, Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller gave me a great great tip about a year ago. We were talking and he said he was trying to break through to an [inaudible 00:20:25.5]. He read the guy's book, he loved it and wanted to have him … I forgot if he wanted to have him on the podcast or just have a conversation with him and straight up email wasn't working and he didn't have a friend to introduce him. So Scott turned the camera on himself clicked record and said "Hey so and so this is Scott from the Amazing Seller I just want to tell you I've read your book. I loved it and it's fantastic. I'd love to chat with you for a few minutes because I've got some things that maybe we can help you with and I've got a very large audience yada, yada, yada" 30 second video inside of an email, hit send, he had a response within about 30 minutes. If you can't go to the conferences, that's a free option. If you're uncomfortable in front of a camera, that's okay. It puts a face to it. It's one of the things that we've started doing with our listings. As many of you know that are looking at our listings we now … for the most part on most of the listings we do a 15 to 20 minute recorded interview with video and audio of the client … our client, the person that's selling the business. We don't do that to convey a lot of detailed information. We do that so that you can get a feel for who they are. If you feel like they're a good person. If you feel like they're likable. If you feel like you could trust them, feel, feel, feel. If you can't get to the conferences that little video I think … shooting email to one of us or all of us with something like that. But I tell you what don't do a template email … a template video because that's the … again the thing not to do, I want to throw it in here between, don't send a template email to every broker in the industry because we'll know it's a template. And generally, those are unpersonal … impersonal and we don't pay much attention to them. Okay, why don't I go ahead and I want to jump to a different … it's my third one I guess right not my fourth one? Third one, create a checklist of your wants. Now, this isn't necessarily a thing that you could do to get the inside track to our listings because it's all of the other things that we're talking about. But for you, it will be conveyed to us that you are preparing, that you are really diligent about your approach. I was at eCommerce Fuel a few years ago and someone that we sold a business to got up on stage and talked about his processes and his experience. And he put a checklist up on the screen and it had a checklist of all of the things that he wanted to buy in a business; all of the features the business must have. Whether it's re-locatable, whether it's got virtual assistants, whether it stores its own inventory, whether it's a software as a service business, etcetera. And then on the right hand side, he had a checklist of the business that he bought from Quiet Light and all of the boxes down beside it. And not all of them were checked off and he still bought the business. So if you've got this list and Kevin Petersen was on the podcast Mark a while back and he's got a portfolio of SaaS businesses and this is what he does. It is a checklist of things that they know what they want and then they always, always, always, always use that checklist on a listing that they were viewing and see how many of the boxes and checking. They've developed a process to score it. They've made this a job like you talked about. But doing that gets you away from the emotional approach and more to sticking with the logical approach. Because this as a buyer you're going to put your life savings on the line it can get emotional. You can get frustrated, you can know that there is a deadline … a horizon to your job, to the bonus that you've taken and it's going to run out and you're going to feel pressure to buy a business. You want to avoid the emotional decision of buying a business and buy it with logic and reason and a checklist I think is a great way to go. Mark: Did you know Joe that I tried to start a podcast before we actually started this one? Joe: No, I didn't know that. Mark: Yeah I actually did like two episodes and I had four recorded and as anyone who's trying to start a podcast knows getting started is often the most difficult thing. Because you get the first few done and you're kind of excited about it and then you realize it's difficult to keep the momentum up. It's not easier when you have somebody else on the podcast, a co-host who records 70% of the episodes like you do Joe. I did and I think the second episode … I don't know but you can still find this this somewhere back in the industrial archives of QuietLightBrokerage.com. There was a blog post and a podcast on do you have an acquisition checklist. It was the exact same thing, right? How do you process these deals quickly and how do you keep it objective. And it was … I have a checklist that you're looking for and modify that checklist and understand that it needs to be this balance between being too broad and too narrow. And that you're not necessarily going to check off all the items in the box on the checklist but are you hitting the major points enough to warrant that deep dive, that deep investigation that somebody makes. So that's one of the good tips as well. I see a thing developing in these as well right? An overarching thing that you want to have this blend of having processes in place but also somewhat of an analog approach … a non-digital approach to this as well. So Joe is talking about … you're talking about recording a video of yourself, just a personalized introduction so that we can see your face; that's very personal in human relationship and somewhat analog in that sense or going to a conference and meeting there some person or calling and having a conversation but also making sure that you have a process and you know what you're looking for as well. And I'm going to pirate I think my last point … I'm going to flip them around and that is when you see something that you like act quickly. And I'm going to put a couple of sub points on this. One, speed … when you're in this space and you're trying to buy a business and you're talking to us and maybe you set up a call and all of a sudden that business is snapped up, it goes under LOI with somebody else, you might think that person must have had an advance notice or they have some sort of an inside track. Speed is really the product of solid preparation. It's executed by people who know what they want and are putting in the time to have the processes in place to be able to evaluate these deals quickly and get back to us in a timely manner. I've dealt with buyers who are looking at an opportunity or they inquire on an opportunity, I do my follow ups with everyone that inquires and then I hear back two weeks later "Oh I haven't had a chance to look at the listing yet". Okay, well you know what … very good chance that you're not going to get this. It's just the nature of it is that there's a lot of people looking at it and those that look at it within the first 24 hours and get back to us are typically going to be ahead of "the inside track". So the basic lesson here is pretty simple, learn to act quickly. That doesn't mean that you have to make rash decisions. It just means that when you receive the information if you like what you see send out an email and get on the calendar right away for that conference call. The buyers who are first in line often do get some level of preference when it comes to that offer time and there's nothing [inaudible 00:27:28.1] to doing that. So act quickly is my fifth point now I'll do my fourth point last. Joe: And there you go now on Mark's point he said review it and get in line to be on a conference call with a buyer. I don't allow conference calls and we'll do most of the brokers at Quiet Light allow conference calls between a buyer and seller unless or until I have spoken to the buyer. So this goes back to reaching out and connecting with us and getting that out of the way. If we've had a conversation we're not going to have to take an extra 15 minutes to schedule that before scheduling a call with the seller of the business. Okay, I actually have a few more points I'm going to blend two into one. One is be likeable and the other is be likable and squeaky, all right? We're repeating things a little bit here but that's very important. It's because we are trying to hone in on these because they're critical and they make a huge difference. So the be likable first one is actually be likable to the seller of the business. When you get to the point of being on a conference call with the seller of the business your objective is to ask the same questions we asked. See if they answered in the same way. Get to know them a little bit. Get a feel for them. Be on the video. Be on the client interview. Determine whether or not you can trust them and move on with an offer of the business. That's the upper level objective of the call. The hidden thing, the most important thing I think is to make sure that when the call is over that seller doesn't want that call to end or that they hang up that call and think god man I really like Mark I hope he's the buyer of my business. Because if it's a great business as Mark said you've got to act fast. There are going to be lots of people that are really prepared to buy a great business and it's going to move … what feels like fast? Fast maybe three or four days all right, you get 24 hours to review the package, you ask for a conference call, you have a conference call and 24 hours later you make an offer or shortly thereafter you make an offer. We don't let things go under contract one hour after they've been listed simply because there's no way for you the buyer to fully review the package. There's no way for you to get on a conference call with the seller all within one hour. It just doesn't happen. When someone presents an offer this is one of those don'ts in between the lines don't make an offer without having gone through the process of a call with the seller within an hour. Because we know you're just trying to tie the listing up under a lot of intent and then make a decision. We want you to make a decision about a business go under letter of intent and go all the way through the closing. Okay, so be likable. Make sure as a buyer that your seller likes you on that conference call. And then the be likable and squeaky is be likable to the brokers. We're human right? I didn't sleep very well last night. I had a bad day. When you call me and you're hard on me I'm going to remember that the next time you want to buy a business. I have a particular buyer that comes to mind right now where he did just that what I said a few minutes ago. He said "I love it I want to go ahead and put in an offer." and I said great well let's have a … he and I have already spoken before. He'd given his LinkedIn profile. He was preparing. I said "Great. Well, let's schedule a call with the seller first. When are you available?" total silence 24 or 36 hours … total silence and then the listening goes under contract three or four days later because there were multiple buyers because it was a great listing. And he sends me an email on the next listing that launches and says "I really like this one Joe can we get on a call with the seller of the business?" I said "Yes we can. What happened last time? You're ready to make an offer and then you disappeared on me." and he emailed me back and said "Well my wife had decided that it wasn't really the business for us. There were some things that she didn't like." to me that that's fine, that's okay. You got to do your homework first before you say I want to go under contract but it also tells me his intention was to tie it up under a lot of intent and then make a decision to buy it. And that's a big no-no because this is a very emotional process for both the buyer and the seller. So be likable to broker and respect their trusts … our time, respect our time and build that positive relationship. Okay, so that's my fourth I think. Be likable and be likable and squeaky. Mark: So yeah … and I'll just say as far as being likable to the broker, we're not asking you to sit there and give us all sorts of praise and compliments. Unless you're talking to Jason in which case that'll probably get you somewhere but when it comes to the … it's just the basic manners, right? Joe: [inaudible 00:32:02.5] by the way Jason doesn't listen to the podcast. We need to stop making fun of Jason because he doesn't even listen to it. Mark: Well, who can we make fun of at Quiet Light? Joe: Oh, let's make fun of you. Mark: Well, I'm always game but I'd say we pick on the new guy and the best-selling author Walker. Joe: You know what … yes, Walker. Right and we're not making fun of him right now I want to pay him a compliment. Before Walker came on as a broker I had a listing and we had three conference calls with three separate buyers and one of them stood out. He didn't end up buying the business but he stood out to me and I'm going man oh man that guy is awesome. I hope I can find him a business. It turned out to be Walker. And so when you like two months later had a great listing and your seller said "Look I really don't want a million calls is there anybody that comes to mind that would be a great broker, a great fit for this business, a great buyer, a great fit for this business?" Walker came to mind and I introduced you and guess who bought the business? Walker did folks. And now he's, of course, an advisor broker at Quiet Light because he's fantastic. But it's that be likable [inaudible 00:33:06.7]. Mark: Here where I was about to pick on him and just kind of tease him but I'm going to pile on with the compliments because if you guys are listening to the podcast you've heard me say in the past the story where I had a buyer after his offer was accepted told my client at the end of the … you know hey we just got under offer let's plan due diligence, took the time just to say "thank you for agreeing to sell me your business". Well, that was Walker and the impact that I had on that deal was so significant. I mean it was again such a simple little thing that you can do and just … it wasn't disingenuous it was a genuine hey look I get it it's your asset. It's what you built and you're agreeing to sell it to me. I really appreciate that. Take the time. Be intentional. We've said that before … be intentional and think about all sides of the transaction here. Everybody hopefully benefits from this transaction so we shouldn't be sitting there and thinking man I'm giving you a lot of money you should be grateful. You should also be thinking I'm also getting a great opportunity by buying this business and being respectful of that … of the person selling their business. For the person selling their businesses especially if it's their first time, this is probably the biggest revenue event they're going to have in their lives at least to date and so it's a very personal thing for a lot of people selling their business. Take that time be respectful. I think that helps when you're in a competitive situation and you have multiple buyers. Like you said Joe we have people get off the phone and say "I really hope I get to sell my business to this person" right? Now everything else needs to line up, the offer has to be there but you can definitely help your case with that. All right last point I have is … I'll just go over it quickly because I think we've covered it pretty well but tell us what you're doing. What other businesses are you part of? What are you really good at? Are you really good at CRO? Are you really good at SEO? Are you really good at SaaS businesses? Are you really interested in getting into something different? Are you really interested in certain niches? Don't just send us a blank email on can we get these all the time and if you're listening to this and thinking these guys just want us to cater everything that we're doing to their way. That's not the case. Look work whatever way you want to work but understand we get a lot of noise that comes in through our inboxes. The whole point of this podcast episode is how do you stand out from the noise? How do you distinguish yourself from other buyers? Well here's what other buyers are doing they send us a template email telling us what they want. That's what everybody else is doing. We do look at those. We do categorize those. We have a spreadsheet that we share internally with that data but it's a spreadsheet with a hundred other names on it and growing every single day. If you want to stand out do some things in different. And one of those things is when you do talk to us or have an opportunity to have a conversation with us tell us what you're doing and don't just talk to us about what you're doing in the monologue. Let's talk about your business a little bit. Let's get into it a little bit. Share some details with us. Not because we necessarily want to know but look we're entrepreneurs we like to talk about this stuff anyways. It's always fun. I was talking to a guy the other day who is not a client, probably won't be a client of ours but a fellow entrepreneur and we just spent probably 45 minutes talking about his business. It was a fascinating conversation. I gained some things from it hopefully he gained some insight from it. And you know what that's now in my mind and if he ever does come to the point of buying or if he ever does come to the point of selling one of his businesses that's something that's always going to stick out in my mind. So how do you cut yourself out? How do you stand above the rest of the noise? Again and have a conversation and let's get into some of the things that you're doing because it's a lot easier for you to be top of mind if I know that you're like a Shakil buying just a gazillion businesses or if you're looking for that first time acquisition. I can think of a buyer right now, I've met them for coffee in person here in the Twin Cities. A husband and wife team I know that they've been looking for a long long time and I have a general sense for what they want. And I'll tell you what because I had coffee with them, because they shared a couple of opportunities that they're looking at with me I know what they're looking for pretty well and hey I'd love to find something for them. So if you're listening to this know I'm still looking for something for you and it's still on my mind. So that's my fifth point, let us know what you're doing. Tell us a little bit. Let's get into the details not just the high level details. Joe: Yeah, back to the human part. When you have coffee with them you talk to them as entrepreneur … as a broker in this industry, you get excited. I want to find them that business. I want to see them succeed. I want them to be another Quiet Light success story and five years from now come back to us and sell the business worth five times the value. Or hear that they're traveling the world while running the business and just changing their lives completely because there's something that occurred over a cup of coffee. So I think that's fantastic. All right my last and final point may sound a bit crazy but if you listen to our podcasts and you've heard Ben Carpel on the podcast … Carpel we always pronounce your name wrong Ben I'm sorry. You're awesome though we love you. If you have listened to Ben and if you have listened to one that aired in early December of '18 RJ you would have heard two pretty, sophisticated, intelligent, likable, passionate buyers say the same thing and that is be willing to overpay for a great business period. There are lots of great businesses that come out and when they do they get sold quickly [inaudible 00:38:37.3]. Mark: Hold on Joe are you just saying this because you're a broker and you get paid on commission for the deals that you're doing? Joe: No. They said it not me. I'm quoting them. And it's true I mean … look it's true we had a listing that I put up in August right? We had 10 offers on it. It was squeaky clean. It had the four pillars. It had age, growth, transferability, documentation. Everything was perfect in it. It was just fantastic. I knew it when I looked at it. We priced it right to achieve the buyers and the sellers goals. We didn't over price it because it was perfectly priced at right still and we had 10 offers. And one … actually, several buyers were willing to overpay for it. One buyer got it because of all of the things we've talked about. He was really likable. He was going to be easy to work with in due diligence. He was going to be easy in transition and training and he paid a little bit of extra. And he was okay with that because this is a great asset. We've got an email from him since then about the crazy growth that they've had in the fourth quarter. And my thought is oh I should share this with seller and then my thought is no that might put him in a little bit of a bad mood. But he achieved his goals. He wanted to get out at a certain time in a certain price and we actually overachieved that. So if two people like RJ and Ben are saying it I think there's some validity to it. Because if it's a great asset, if it's a great business and others only were willing to pay a certain amount it's great for you. It's not going to be great for everyone; that's the thing. Be willing to overpay for a great asset that's great for you. If you're into hunting and fishing and it's a hunting and fishing ecommerce business that's doing amazing things it's something you're going to be a little bit more passionate about. And in my experience when you've got some passion for something it's going to help you overcome those hurdles and those tough times that will come to you as an entrepreneur. So if it's a little bit … if you pay a little bit more for it I think you're going to get that return investment quicker than if you buy a complete fixer upper that's going to take some time. Mark: Yeah so I'm going to … based on that go back to what you said earlier about people who email you and say "you're way overpriced like there's just no way that this is priced right. It's overpriced by a ton". Valuations are relative. That is just the reality of it. In that survey that we put out we had people give us feedback that said I love you guys but I think that your listings recently are getting overpriced. And then I had other feedback come back that said we love you guys but the perception is that you kind of underprice your properties. So we have these two conflicting things where we have some people saying hey you're overpriced and other people saying no you're underpriced. Look when it comes down to it the price of these assets varies based on the economy at the time but also probably, more importantly, they're based on the individual ROI that you can get. And what you can get from a particular business is going to be different from what somebody else can get from a business based on your specific skill sets. And so if you find something that's a good match it comes down to return on investment. What can you do with this business? If you can make that thing work be willing to pay more than what the average person in the marketplace is willing to pay. You're still going to get a good deal. But with the competitive nature of thinking am I going to overpay for this you know crush your ability to get a deal done because somebody else will pay a little bit more. When we price a business one of the big mistakes I think happens in our industry is that people price a business for the marketplace average. That's a mistake as a broker. And for those that are on the buying side here, I'm sorry about this next point but it's just the case, we work for the seller. I'm not looking for the marketplace of buyers. I'm looking for a buyer within the marketplace which means I want to aim towards the top end of that average range or the marketplace range so that I can find that buyer. Be that buyer at the top of the range for the business that matches for you. Otherwise, you're going to be competing against the full marketplace of buyers. I don't know if that makes any sense or not but again the idea of finding that opportunity for you and standing out and making sure that when you find it move on it. Joe: Absolutely I'll just wrap up my side of it with the fact that we're all entrepreneurs as Mark said. And we love what we do. It's crazy but a lot of what we're doing is simply helping people. We're giving up our time and we're getting something in return for it. We are making a living but we love it and it's exciting to work with great buyers, great sellers who are achieving their financial and personal goals. It's a lot of fun and we want to help each and every one that comes through our email or over the phone or text or whatever it might be. Help you achieve your goals whether you're a buyer or a seller. And all of these things that we've talked about we've talked about it through direct experience. We built and bought and sold our own online businesses and now we get to see what thousands of people do both on the buy and sell side. And so it does come from experience. It comes from the school of hard knocks more than anything else. We've learned a lot of things that people shouldn't do and a lot more things that people do right that stand out in these five things that we've each talked about or all these things. Mark: Right. So, Joe, you know what I'm going to do right now? Joe: I have no idea. Mark: I'm going to end this podcast episode because I have an appointment with somebody who wants to buy a business and wants to spend some time talking on the phone with me. Good for this guy. He's doing the right thing. Guys if you're listening to this and you have ideas for an episode like this where you have a question … again that survey [inaudible 00:44:06.9] some great feedback from everybody. If you took it thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm serious- [crosstalk 00:44:12.5]. Mark: Answer a question that we're trying to tackle in your quest for your first acquisition or your tenth acquisition. Yeah, send us an email … send me an email at mark@quietlightbrokerage or joe@quietlightbrokerage.com. We'll either find an expert to bring on the show to talk about it or Joe and I will jump on it on a show like this. And we'll cover the topic as best as we can. Joe: Perfect. Go and hunt that buyer. Mark: All right, sounds good. Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/

This episode is a follow up of sorts to our 200th episode. After wrapping up 5 Minute Pitch semis, my co-judges Scott Voelker, Steve Chou, Greg Mercier and I had some time to talk a bit about ecommerce while out for dinner here in San Diego. But it's not the usual shop talk that you'd expect. For one, Scott initiated a speed round and dropped this thought-provoking question. What you would do right now with all the information that you know, everything that you've gained, but you only have 5,000 dollars to start your new business? Unsurprisingly, each one of us had a different answer to this. I'd start a blog and get into affiliate marketing. Greg would invent a product or improve upon an existing one. Steve (who doesn't need the $5,000) would join an online forum, become an authority figure and use that influence as a launchpad to having his own paid courses and webinars. Finally, Scott would build an audience by creating content that would target a specific or niche market. These discussions are really something that I look forward to. Being able to bounce ideas of three of my best buddies in the industry, each one successful in his own right is always a treat. That being said, these talks bring about insights that could be useful to any up and coming entrepreneur. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we had fun recording it. In other news, registration to EcomCrew Premium is now closed but, you can still learn from us through our suite of free courses. There's a total of 20 videos covering ecommerce topics like Importing from China and Building a 7-Figure Business. Find more information on the link below. Free Video Courses We're also launching giveaway during the holidays so like and follow our Facebook page for the latest updates. Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

It's our 200th episode. I'd like to start off by saying a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who've tuned in to this podcast from the very first one. A few weeks ago we wrapped up the semi-final round of 5 Minute Pitch. The finalists will be judged on their presentations at the Seller's Summit next year in Miami, Florida. After three days of competition, I sat down with my co-judges Scott Voelker, Steve Chou, and Greg Mercier to record this podcast. Over the course of this endeavor, we've had the chance to meet a variety of entrepreneurs. Some have already gotten their feet wet while others are still at pre-income level. There are those who developed their own products and those who took the “me too” approach in terms of what they wanted to sell. Each of them had something to bring and this whole experience has reinforced our belief that people behind ecommerce businesses are some of the most driven, passionate, and hardworking individuals you'd find anywhere. It is indeed a great community to be a part of. With that said, here are some takeaways from this fun and meaningful discussion. Is it still possible to bootstrap an ecommerce business? Uniqueness and defensibility are good characteristics to have A “me too” product isn't necessarily a bad thing Amazon is still a great place to get started, especially if you're a solopreneur But when your business gains traction, start building your brand outside of Amazon Personality can be a big factor; putting yourself out there to promote your brand can be your ticket to success Double down or diversify? If you have a strategy that you know works, it makes sense to double down or even triple down on it A good time to diversify would be after achieving a significant business goal Head over to https://www.5minutepitch.com/ and sign up so you can follow along with the selection process. Registration to EcomCrew Premium is open for one last time this year. Follow our Facebook page for all the latest updates. Sign up this week and you can get 50% off on our subscription plans. If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Early this year my buddies Steve Chou of My Wife Quit Her Job, Scott Voelker of The Amazing Seller, Greg Mercer of Jungle Scout and I came up with a new show called the 5 Minute Pitch. All four of us met up last week to film the semi-finals, and it's a little strange to say this, but it's probably the hardest I've worked the whole year. The schedule was so brutal that I wasn't able to touch my laptop for 3 whole days. Imagine that. The 5 Minute Pitch The 5 Minute Pitch is a Shark Tank style show where we have 32 contestants pitch us their businesses for 5 minutes, for a chance to win $50,000. Unlike Shark Tank, there's no strings attached, which means we don't take any equity from the company that wins. Over the next few weeks after the creation of the show, the four of us and a couple of guest judges got together on Skype while 32 companies pitched their business ideas to us. We narrowed the contestants down to 8 and had them fly to San Diego last week to present an extended pitch, in person, to all four of us plus one very special guest judge who we can't reveal yet (hint: his podcast is in iTunes' top 100 Business Podcasts). We will be airing the first batch of pitches early next year on iTunes and YouTube. The finals, which will determine the winner who will take the $50,000 prize, will be held in Miami, Florida during the Sellers Summit. Most Important Takeaway from the Semi Finals There is one thing that stood out to me during our filming last week (aside from the back pain from having to sit in the same position for too long) and that is there's one thing all successful businesses have. The ability to adapt to change. In business, you don't need to have everything figured out at the get go. You don't need to have everything planned. If you get too buried in planning, taking into account every possible scenario in your head, you might not get around to doing anything at all. Learn to take action, get early feedback, and use that feedback to steer your business in the right direction. Being nimble and learning how to ride the tide is the most important skill you need to learn to achieve business success. If you think about it, so many successful businesses--AirBnB, Lyft, Cisco--didn't have all their ducks in a row. And if you look at their history, they are not the same company as they were when they started. But they all have one thing in common: the ability to adapt to change. Even the 5 Minute Pitch didn't start out perfectly. We knew we wanted to do this but the details weren't clear to any of us when we started. But we went ahead and did it anyway, improvising and learning from our mistakes along the way. The result of it is a show that all four of us are excited and proud to present to you. EcomCrew Premium Opening One Last Time This Year We've recently been limiting the number of people we accommodate with EcomCrew Premium because we wanted to be able to attend to the needs of every single one of our members, and having too many people sign up prevents us from doing that. We have a trick up our sleeve for our next reopening on Black Friday, which will be the last time we will open registrations this year. Connect with us on Facebook to be among the first to get updates about our surprise for the reopening. Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

¡Bienvenid@ al podcast del Emprendedor Amazónico! Me llamo Rafa y soy el ser humano detrás de todo esto. Episodio a episodio te iré dando las herramientas (nada de humo aquí, todo perfectamente aplicable y medible) que te permitirán, al igual que a mí, y miles de seres humanos más, me han permitido, vivir la vida que sueñas. Hace unos años me sentía angustiado en mi trabajo. Había terminado la carrera, y había encontrado un muy buen trabajo de “lo mío”. Sin embargo no era para nada feliz. No me sentía realizado en el trabajo, detestaba los horarios absurdos, que además no coincidían para nada con mis picos de productividad natural (es decir cuando más me cundía hacer cosas) y echaba más horas que un reloj, siempre anhelando que llegara el viernes. Al igual que tú, empecé a investigar cómo dar un cambio a mi vida. Estaba confuso y aterrado pues todos a mi alrededor pensaban que estaba loco. Todo empezó a cambiar cuando descubrí otros podcast que me presentaron una realidad diferente. Descubrí que hay miles y miles de personas que se ganan la vida online. Viajan cuando quieren, viven donde quieren, en definitiva, viven la vida de sus sueños. Aprovechan todas las bondades tecnológicas de la época que nos ha tocado vivir para exprimir la vida al máximo. Desde ese momento, pienso que hay dos grupos de personas respecto a este tema: aquellos que sólo se quejan y anhelan una vida que les haga felices y aquellos que como tú y como yo, cogen las riendas de su vida y luchan por mejorarla. Tras varios años dedicado en exclusiva al mundo online puedo asegurarte que ese estilo de vida. No es un mito, como yo pensaba cuando lo escuché por primera vez, ni tampoco son personas especiales con súper poderes que les permiten vivir la vida de sus sueños. No. Cada año viajo a más de 8 países diferentes y en mis viajes he conocido a muchas personas diferentes que se ganan la vida online. Todos caminan sobre dos piernas, unos son más guapos, otros más feos. Y todos son como tú y como yo. Tienen sus miedos, sus esperanzas, aficiones, etc. Ah y un ordenador portátil. Es lo único que necesitan para trabajar allá donde estén. No tienen que pedir permiso a ningún jefe, ni irse de vacaciones cuando les toque. Puede hacer deporte de manera regular y buscar los mejores supermercados para comer los más sano posible. Al igual que tú, ellos y yo elegimos luchar por vivir la vida que soñamos. Existen muchos modelos de negocio online, en el Emprendedor Amazónico, nos vamos a centrar en la creación de marcas de productos físicos y en cómo usar el poder de Amazon para catapultar el lanzamiento de estas marcas. En el podcast te voy a enseñar todo lo que he aprendido a lo largo de varios años de estudio y experiencia. Yo creé mi propia marca de productos hace unos años y además he trabajado, y trabajo como consultor, con muchas otras marcas, en distintas categorías. Además de haber estudiado las técnicas de márketing de grandes nombres en el mundo de los negocios online como Scott Voelker, Pat Flynn, Ramit Sethi, Neil Patel o Ryan Moran. Todo esto me ha dado una profunda visión sobre este modelo de negocio. Como ves todos estos nombres son de personas de habla inglesa, pero no te preocupes, este podcast no es en inglés. Ahora tú tienes la oportunidad de acceder a todo ese conocimiento en español, a través del podcast del Emprendedor Amazónico. No importa si no tienes ni idea. Vas a aprender a generar ideas de producto y de negocio desde cero hasta creación de fuentes de tráfico externas a Amazon para hacer crecer tu marca sin necesitar a Amazon. Recuerda que Amazon será sólo la plataforma de lanzamiento, pero que el objetivo es crear tu propia marca que puedas vender en tu tienda online. Vas a aprender no sólo lo que yo ya sé, sino todo lo que yo vaya aprendiendo y descubriendo, además de lo que muchos otros expertos que traeré al podcast tienen que enseñarte. No esperes más y únete al grupo de los que hemos decidido vivir la vida de nuestros sueños. ¡Escucha el episodio de Introducción ahora! Nos vemos en el podcast. Rafa El Emprendedor Amazónico #cambiandovidasemprendiendo

If you're an entrepreneur who's been tinkering around with an awesome business idea but short on capital, we'd love to help. In this episode, I met up with three of my buddies in the industry, Greg Mercer from Jungle Scout, Steve Chou from My Wife Quit Her Job, and Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller, to talk about our latest project called the 5 Minute Pitch. It's an opportunity for bootstrapped online businesses to pitch their best business idea to us as judges and win $50,000. Who are we looking for? We are on the lookout for an online business with great forward momentum. We want someone who can take a unique business idea and add the meat and bones to it. So, give us your business backstory, be transparent about your numbers, and spill all the details for your chosen venture.   Finally, act natural. “Let your personality shine through because at the end of the day we are investing in people. Oftentimes, businesses have to make pivots and go on to do different types of things. So we want to know that the founders that we're giving this money to as a gift are going to really exceed with it.”, says Greg. How can you join? Simply log on to www.5minutepitch.com or fill out the application form here. Please note we only accept 32 entries so time is of the essence. How do we pick a winner? The grand prize winner will be selected after a series of elimination rounds. We're starting with 32 contestants who will be giving us their 5-minute pitch on Skype. From that cluster, we'll be selecting 8 contestants to advance to the next round. These 8 contestants will again be narrowed down to 4. The lucky 4 will be flown to San Diego to present their pitch live to the four judges. From these, we'll then select the grand winner of a $50,000 cash gift.   What does the winner get? We're giving away a cash gift worth $50,000 to the lucky winner plus some mentoring time with each judge. We're launching this contest in the fall. Sign up for our email list to get the latest updates.   Other Useful Resources: MyEcomcrew Jungle Scout My Wife Quit Her Job The Amazing Seller   Thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

¡Bienvenid@ al podcast del Emprendedor Amazónico! Me llamo Rafa y soy el ser humano detrás de todo esto. Episodio a episodio te iré dando las herramientas (nada de humo aquí, todo perfectamente aplicable y medible) que te permitirán, al igual que a mí, y miles de seres humanos más, me han permitido, vivir la vida que sueñas. Hace unos años me sentía angustiado en mi trabajo. Había terminado la carrera, y había encontrado un muy buen trabajo de “lo mío”. Sin embargo no era para nada feliz. No me sentía realizado en el trabajo, detestaba los horarios absurdos, que además no coincidían para nada con mis picos de productividad natural (es decir cuando más me cundía hacer cosas) y echaba más horas que un reloj, siempre anhelando que llegara el viernes. Al igual que tú, empecé a investigar cómo dar un cambio a mi vida. Estaba confuso y aterrado pues todos a mi alrededor pensaban que estaba loco. Todo empezó a cambiar cuando descubrí otros podcast que me presentaron una realidad diferente. Descubrí que hay miles y miles de personas que se ganan la vida online. Viajan cuando quieren, viven donde quieren, en definitiva, viven la vida de sus sueños. Aprovechan todas las bondades tecnológicas de la época que nos ha tocado vivir para exprimir la vida al máximo. Desde ese momento, pienso que hay dos grupos de personas respecto a este tema: aquellos que sólo se quejan y anhelan una vida que les haga felices y aquellos que como tú y como yo, cogen las riendas de su vida y luchan por mejorarla. Tras varios años dedicado en exclusiva al mundo online puedo asegurarte que ese estilo de vida. No es un mito, como yo pensaba cuando lo escuché por primera vez, ni tampoco son personas especiales con súper poderes que les permiten vivir la vida de sus sueños. No. Cada año viajo a más de 8 países diferentes y en mis viajes he conocido a muchas personas diferentes que se ganan la vida online. Todos caminan sobre dos piernas, unos son más guapos, otros más feos. Y todos son como tú y como yo. Tienen sus miedos, sus esperanzas, aficiones, etc. Ah y un ordenador portátil. Es lo único que necesitan para trabajar allá donde estén. No tienen que pedir permiso a ningún jefe, ni irse de vacaciones cuando les toque. Puede hacer deporte de manera regular y buscar los mejores supermercados para comer los más sano posible. Al igual que tú, ellos y yo elegimos luchar por vivir la vida que soñamos. Existen muchos modelos de negocio online, en el Emprendedor Amazónico, nos vamos a centrar en la creación de marcas de productos físicos y en cómo usar el poder de Amazon para catapultar el lanzamiento de estas marcas. En el podcast te voy a enseñar todo lo que he aprendido a lo largo de varios años de estudio y experiencia. Yo creé mi propia marca de productos hace unos años y además he trabajado, y trabajo como consultor, con muchas otras marcas, en distintas categorías. Además de haber estudiado las técnicas de márketing de grandes nombres en el mundo de los negocios online como Scott Voelker, Pat Flynn, Ramit Sethi, Neil Patel o Ryan Moran. Todo esto me ha dado una profunda visión sobre este modelo de negocio. Como ves todos estos nombres son de personas de habla inglesa, pero no te preocupes, este podcast no es en inglés. Ahora tú tienes la oportunidad de acceder a todo ese conocimiento en español, a través del podcast del Emprendedor Amazónico. No importa si no tienes ni idea. Vas a aprender a generar ideas de producto y de negocio desde cero hasta creación de fuentes de tráfico externas a Amazon para hacer crecer tu marca sin necesitar a Amazon. Recuerda que Amazon será sólo la plataforma de lanzamiento, pero que el objetivo es crear tu propia marca que puedas vender en tu tienda online. Vas a aprender no sólo lo que yo ya sé, sino todo lo que yo vaya aprendiendo y descubriendo, además de lo que muchos otros expertos que traeré al podcast tienen que enseñarte. No esperes más y únete al grupo de los que hemos decidido vivir la vida de nuestros sueños. ¡Escucha el episodio de Introducción ahora! Nos vemos en el podcast. Rafa El Emprendedor Amazónico #cambiandovidasemprendiendo

Scott Voelker's Podcast has had more than 8 million downloads and his Facebook group has 52,000 followers. That is the equivalent of everyone in the city of Los Angeles downloading his podcast…twice, and almost everyone in Maine's largest city (Portland) joining his Facebook group. With these numbers he's clearly doing something right. Is he teaching hacks, tricks and tactics to help people sell more products on their ecommerce site and Amazon? No. Is he selling tons of courses and charging huge sums for mastermind sessions? No. Scott's motivation is to help first, and then help some more. The end result is something we can all learn from, huge success. This can be applied to most business models regardless of the platform. In this podcast Scott shares his not so secret secrets, tips on staying focused and well organized, and talks about how his teachings focus on going well beyond Amazon to build a sustainable and valuable online business. Episode Highlights: How to block your day to get more done How to commit to your schedule How to build a business part time Why it is risky to sell only on Amazon How to go beyond Amazon and build a more valuable business Where to start and validate the business model Building your own email list Why Scott has business partners and how it works How Scott splits revenues with partner 10x10x1 goals and why they are better than selling 100 a day How to spike the Amazon algorithm How Scott launched his first training program Why smaller events are more personal Workshops to build email lists and sell more products beyond Amazon Free training is all on the Podcast Resources: The Amazing Seller Podcast – The best place to get started is listening to the podcast series of how to get started. Private Label Workshop – This is a FREE Workshop where they cover the 5 phases for getting started and how to launch your first PL product. FREE Private Label Course – This is a FREE course 10 Day email/video course that teaches the 5 phases for launching a product on Amazon. The Private Label Classroom – This is a Paid Class and Community that teaches and connects you with a support group that helps you launch a successful business. The class also meets for LIVE hangouts twice per month and has access to exclusive seller interviews. Joe Valley's Guest Appearance on Scott's Amazing Seller Podcast

Today I want to talk about the direction the company is taking and how I plan to keep up with it. We have really plateaued as a company, and part of that is because we don't have the manpower. We need some new structure. I have decided to take a two-prong approach to restructuring things. The two sides of the business are:  The product side or “getting the product to our customers.”  The eCommerce side - email marketing, promotions, product development, and generally everything pre-sale.  Hopefully, this new structure will help us get to an eight figures status. If you know someone who is kind of a “techie” person, then contact me at mike@terran.com. I would like a resume or a letter telling me why you are the best fit for the company.  The things I'm looking for in a new hire are as follows:  Able to relocate or already living in the San Diego area.  Understands and knows how to manage content.  Experience in eCommerce is super important. You need to know how to run Amazon and Shopify stores.  A fast learner who can pick up on the stuff they don't know.  A good communicator, so that we can be more efficient.  A hard worker and self-starter.  Someone who wants a long term position.  I realize that nobody is going to have all the experience I am looking for, but what is important is the prospect's willingness to learn. So if you know someone or you are a good fit for me, please let me know.  Just a reminder, I will be speaking at some events this year. Here is a list of those events.  Ecommerce All Stars -- Austin, TX, August 4-5. Global Sources -- Hong Kong, October 17-19. EcommerceFuel Live -- Laguna Beach, CA, January 11-13, 2018. Also if you go to www.ecomcrew.com/summit2017, you can download my slides from my presentation at Sellers' Summit 2017. You will also get a discount code for $50 off the price of a virtual pass to all the great content from the summit.  Included in this package will be a free round table session with Scott Voelker, Greg Mercer, Jeff Cohen, Steve Chou, and myself. That round table will be June 26th at 2 pm Pacific time. If that's something that interests you, then check out the link to sign up.  This episode is sponsored by Stamped.io. We have recently switched to Stamped.io, so we can get the most out of our reviews, and they have a really great product. We are proud to partner with them and there is a link below to check them out.  Resources Mentioned Today:  Amazon.com Colorit.com Ecommerce All Stars EcommerceFuel Live Ecom Crew Facebook Page Global Sources Sellers' Summit Virtual Pass Shopify Stamped.io Tactical.com  Don't forget about our Facebook Live episodes. Just like our Facebook page and you will be notified when we do an episode. If you have any questions or anything you'd like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also, we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Scott Voelker's (TheAmazingSeller.com) journey is an amazing Amazon and e-commerce success story. Beginning with retail arbitrage (buying local items and selling them on Amazon), then online arbitrage (buying physical items online and re-selling them on Amazon), private labeling (get a product sourced), and finally, e-commerce (setup a storefront outside of Amazon), Scott has not only generated a huge income scaling his business, he also teaches others how to do it. Topics covered: how Scott narrows down the perfect product to sell, every time Scott's "open brand" strategy that allows him to experiment with new physical products how to deal with copycats and the price wars how to build a list and get lots of reviews quickly (and remain compliant) using contests Resources The Amazing Seller (Podcast) The Private Label (Workshop) The Amazing Seller (Facebook group)

Scott Voelker is a serial entrepreneur. It all started worked for his father's construction company, which the two built to over a million dollars annually. From there, Scott made the leap into photography, because freedom and security meant so much to his family. Business was great, but it turned out to be another job. From there, he went into the online space where he built courses along with some selling on Ebay; he was beginning his journey into freedom. Scott learned about selling on Amazon, and saw it as the next best option to digital products; in the FBA model, Amazon handled most of the heavy lifting. His vision of freedom was booming much more real. His first year in business on Amazon is more than the average American would see in ten. From there, he started the Amazing Seller podcast, in an effort to reach out to higher level seller. However, it turned out to be so much more of a teaching experience, allowing Scott to touch so many lives. Check out his story...   Scott's Favorite Quote: "Take Action!"   Scott's Favorite Book:Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion   Links From Today's Show:theamazingseller.comtheamazingseller.com/workshopAmazon Selling Blueprint - How to Find and Launch Your First Private-Label Product on Amazon in 90 Days or Less