The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Kyle: Your company, will only rise to the height of your own leadership.
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[00:00:59] Jason: All right. Welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Leader. We’re joined here today around the table by Michael Veazey, Kyle Hammerer, Chris Green, and me Jason Miles. And, we’re ready to jump into something new and different. So we wanted to just mention that we’re gonna switch up the format a bit for our listeners.
[00:01:16] We’re gonna start doing these, conversations as more of what you might call free flowing topics, where just whatever we’re passionate about in the moment or at. We record, we’re gonna talk about, bring our enthusiasms to the conversation or our frustrations or whatever’s top of mind for us. So just a trigger warning, if you’re liking structure and stability, we’re changing everything and,
[00:01:41] So with that said, and with that, ripping the bandaid off and changing our format, who wants to jump in first with something that’s top of mind today?
[00:01:49] Chris: I got something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’d love to get y’all’s opinion on it because I’ve been in this, entrepreneur, Amazon, maybe like reselling space.
[00:01:58] Although I’ve been in software, we do the whole scam power thing and honestly a lot of the things I’ve always done have just been cuz I enjoy them. They’re fun. I’m like, we can see barcodes at the store. FBA is like a real thing. I can take all that inventory, send. There’s like a whole new business model here and it’s interesting and it’s fun and I’m enjoying it and I would do it for free, right?
[00:02:15] I didn’t do it for the money. I can’t do it for free. And more recently, like this summer, I got back into yard sailing, which I find I like a lot more than thrifting, right? Thrifting. The quality’s not there. Sometimes the prices are high yard sales, brand new stuff. Ridiculously low prices. Sell it on eBay.
[00:02:30] The technology that we have, like eBay has their own barcode scanning app. Amazon has a barcode scanning app. They are like professional scan, power barcode scanning apps, and you can identify products. And honestly, I would do this for free, right? The fact that I can find stuff that can sell for profit is one thing.
[00:02:44] The fact that it’s 2022 and I can make content and make videos and build an audience around, Hey guys, I just found this and now I’m selling it. I’m having a great time and you can find this kind of stuff too. Here’s what to look for kind of thing. And the way that I’ve always approached things is like, how can I make a course outta this?
[00:03:01] How can I write a book about this? How can I create something that can hand off to somebody where Hey, I really enjoyed doing this. Wanna make some money? Here’s how to do it. Here’s the blueprint. Here’s exactly how I do it. But I kept thinking that if you don’t enjoy it, because the second part of this is.
[00:03:17] Having experience, like knowing like when you scan books or when you go to a yard sale, I know what to not pick up. Cause I’ve seen it everywhere. I know what to not scan because I know it’s not worth anything. And that only comes from experience. That’s not that like I know it comes special. I know it cause I’ve literally scanned a million books.
[00:03:31] I’ve gone to hundreds and not thousands of sales. That’s the experience that you get. That’s the thing you can’t teach. So how do you get experience? What you gotta put in the time right now. How do you put in the time if you don’t. So I went back to that previous step. You have to find something that you enjoy.
[00:03:45] Cuz if you don’t enjoy going to yard sales, and I’ve taught people to go to, thrift stores and scan books and they’re like, I don’t like thrift stores. They’re dirty and they smell weird. And they will literally use that as an excuse to not go in. This was early FBA days, you could make a thousand dollars a day going to thrift stores in your hometown, but because it was dirty and didn’t smell good, they didn’t wanna do it.
[00:04:03] And and that just stuck with me. If you don’t enjoy it. You’re not gonna do it. So if you can find something you can enjoy that you’re willing to put in the time and gain some experie. That has a money making opportunity to it. One, you can make money doing it yourself. And two, yeah, you can bundle that up into something that you can offer to other people, either as a lead magnet or a course or a book or all these things.
[00:04:21] And that’s like the input I would like from you guys is those are the two things you have to enjoy. It has to be be fun, and if it is, then you’ll put into time to gain that experience. That makes it like just simple, no-brainer and easy thing. I, but I don’t know if that could be taught without those.
[00:04:37] Jason: Yeah, it’s a great question. I, what you picked my interest by was when you said you like something and then you always wanna teach it, you’re biased towards wanting to be Oh, sure. The teacher or the author or the course creator. I’m that way too. I’m like, as soon as I start doing something, I want to teach it.
[00:04:53] And I guess that’s just human nature. I don’t know. But, I don’t think it human nature. But on that point,
[00:04:58] Chris: Maybe not. I do it because I definitely understand a little bit about myself that I want. So me sharing information in order to like, get people to say, Hey, that’s really cool, Chris.
[00:05:06] And of course I’m helping them. I don’t know if you have I call it myself a light complex. I don’t know if you would call yourself the
[00:05:11] Jason: same way. Yeah. It’s an interesting question isn’t why do we wanna be in front of people? Be a leader, be a teacher? Is it about status?
[00:05:18] Is it about. Is it about wanting to, It’s about validation. Str strive for validation. Yeah, this is all, I’m going back to my four and five year old, my childhood days, . But yeah, I think there’s something there for sure. Do you have to love something to do it? Yeah, I think over time you, you have to, It’s gotta be profitable and you gotta love doing it.
[00:05:37] You know where you’re gonna walk away for various reasons.
[00:05:40] Chris: You could do a short term if you didn’t love it. Yeah. But if you wanna do it long term, if you wanna make it big, , like Kyle or or Michael. If you didn’t enjoy doing podcasts, if you didn’t enjoy selling on Amazon, how long could you do it?
[00:05:52] Like you could force yourself, right? But eventually your heart’s not gonna be in it.
[00:05:55] Kyle: You have to have staying power. And you might enjoy something in the moment, but, you will not, it will not all be, roses and sunshine and fun. For the entire length of whatever it is you’re working on, right?
[00:06:08] There’s going to be challenges and you have to have enough passion around what you’re doing and enough, I guess maybe strength of conviction on it. Yes, I know this is, the right path to weather the storm. And if you don’t, then you just end up bouncing around from one high to the next high to the next high
[00:06:26] And, you’re not getting any substance out of it, but, .
[00:06:30] Chris: Yeah. Would you call that discipline, right? Yeah. Cause you can discipline yourself to do something you don’t
[00:06:35] Kyle: like. I think it’s discipline, but I think it’s also like having a clear vision of where you, if think about the entrepreneurs who, who create something from scratch, like the Elon Musk of the world, right?
[00:06:46] So he obviously has a vision for going to Mars and probably a bunch of other things. But SpaceX is the vehicle for him to get there and he realizes, Okay, I. Build a reusable rocket that lands and that’s step one because then I can proving out the technology and making it cheaper. And then I can, people will pay me to send stuff into space and I can beat everybody else to it cuz I’m much cheaper.
[00:07:07] And that will help, can be the revenue and the money to then fund what I really want to do. Obviously that was not just like a straight, Oh, this is fun and everything’s working great, right? It’s No, I have to have this next rocket not explode, or I’m bankrupt. It’s it was a rough ride.
[00:07:22] So I think that there’s yes, discipline to it, but more, I think importantly, I think you have to have a vision of where you’re gonna go and who you’re gonna serve and how you gonna get there. And that’s gonna help whether it’s fun or not. There’s gonna be times where I think at the core, you have to have a deep conviction and belief in it.
[00:07:38] It’ll be fun along the way, and it should be, You should enjoy what you’re doing, but ultimately, I think it comes down to your conviction around the vision of what you’re trying to produce. So being
[00:07:46] Jason: mission driven.
[00:07:46] Kyle: . Yeah. Chris,
[00:07:48] Michael: I’m curious what. , it makes you feel like this is a topic you wanted to bring up because obviously it’s interesting as I read some of your media posts and I like Facebook or what have you, and this mental game of do I need self validation?
[00:08:01] Is this okay or not? Is that what causes you to bring it up? What is it that.
[00:08:04] Chris: Oh, no. Not that part. I know myself well enough that I have a, that I want to be liked, that I want approval of others. I think part of it is like when you believe something, you want other people to believe it as well, as validation, right?
[00:08:13] So if I believe, there’s like an opportunity here to flip stuff and do the eBay thing. If no one else agrees with me, then you’re like, Is there something wrong with me? I think now I’m not using that as an exact example. I know a lot of people go out and enjoy Thring and selling it on eBay, but I definitely look to scale it up.
[00:08:28] Like when I did scam power, I just did it for. And it was my business partner, Paul, who was We can’t make this app free. We have to charge money for it. This is a business kinda thing. I’m like, Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Like I didn’t think of it as let’s start a business and a business is going to be built around software as a service.
[00:08:41] We’re gonna charge a monthly fee and this is how we’re gonna, none of that. It was like, can we do this? And we can, Okay, cool, let’s do it. And then I was I eventually got off on doing something else. So I didn’t have that discipline kind of thing. But as I’m trying to like, I’m just thinking through things as I’m doing this to okay, I can make a book.
[00:08:55] I know I can, build something big around this. I know it’s gonna help a lot of people. I know it’s gonna get a lot of interest. And I’m just trying to think of the perfect way. And it’s I don’t have a perfect complex, but I wanna have a book that like anybody can pick up and be like, This works.
[00:09:08] It covers everything and that’s why so many of my books are like way too big. I try to cover it too much, but I’m trying to keep it simple, like, why do people succeed with this and why do they fail when like I go out and I’m just having fun. I would do this every single day. It wasn’t like, yard silver Roman weekend and then it snows around, I’m here.
[00:09:23] Yeah, but how communicate that to someone else, so they actually, I try to guarantee success and of course I can’t guarantee it, but I would say if you don’t enjoy yard, And you probably are not going to, long term succeed with this specific model.
[00:09:35] Michael: So if your question is, or you are thing you’re wrestling with, how do I create a book that is really fantastic and guaranteed success?
[00:09:42] . I wonder whether, from what I’m hearing you, you can’t answer that question, which is most people won’t. I can’t think of anything worse than doing that. And now I may be wrong. I might go there if I work with you cuz you’re an enthusiast. It might rub off on me. I might love it, but I I think it’s very likely I would hate it.
[00:09:55] So even though I think you’re an amazing guy and you’re super bright and the experience that I trust and like you, I still. Do the thing. So I don’t think it’s about necessarily the book. I think it’s about maybe, accepting that this isn’t for most people, most, it’s a kind of marketing cliche and it’s obvious thing to say, but it’s always about message to market match.
[00:10:13] And if the market for people who actually love thrifting might be quite a lot smaller than somebody who absolutely loves it, might perceive, and in which case then maybe it’s not a question of having the perfect book for everyone to be able to do it. They just picked it up cause it’s so perfectly written and complete and to the point that it becomes very sick, as you said.
[00:10:29] Maybe it’s actually you are only looking for the enthusiasts who are halfway there. Oh, definitely. Definitely. I don’t about to any use at all. ,
[00:10:37] Chris: maybe I put that out there the wrong way. It’s not, I’m not trying to make something that for everybody, but for the people who do say, Look, I wanna make extra money.
[00:10:43] I have the opportunity based on where I am. Maybe they’re not good enough at anything else to, start some kind of business. This can be that kinda easy way, whether they need to because for the money or they want to, because they enjoy it. And then for those people to pick up the. Be like, Okay, this lays it out perfectly.
[00:10:58] This explains, this goes into the how and the why behind the scenes. So no, it’s definitely not something for everybody. But I would put out there for everybody who might say, Hey, look, I wanna make money on the internet, but you know what, I’m not really good at anything. I’m like, here, take this book because even if you’re not good at this, any money can do this kind of thing.
[00:11:14] And maybe it’s just to remove excuses from people, like before they get into entrepreneurship, before they get into FBA and wholesale, if they don’t have that skillset, , I do believe anybody can take their phone and go look stuff up and see what it’s worth and make a arithmetic decision kind of thing.
[00:11:30] And if they’re not willing to do that, then I’m gonna call ’em out on their nonsense and be like, then don’t say you want go get a job cause you, you’re clearly not really serious about pursuing this if you won’t do the easiest, lowest hanging fruit.
[00:11:41] Kyle: But Chris, I want passive income or I do nothing.
[00:11:44] Can I make money? , that’s
[00:11:46] Chris: I take you to step two. This is 1.0. Now, if you wanna do a 2.0, look at exactly what I’m doing and say, Oh, I can make content around my first stores and my yard sales, and I can publish books with KDP and I can do a membership with it. That’s the 2.0. But you can’t get the 2.0 if you don’t do 1.0.
[00:12:01] And I find so many people don’t have the 1.0 understanding, I wanna make money on the internet. How come everybody else. Oh, it’s cuz you’re not providing like any real value. And I’ll say that about the yard selling. What’s the value? Yeah. Yard selling. What’s the, how am I bringing value by looking something up and going and selling it on eBay?
[00:12:16] Anybody can do that, which is why you’re not making a million dollars selling an eBay. You can make a million dollars selling books if your book gets sold to enough people and brings enough value and all these other things. So it’s kinda yeah, maybe what I’m trying to find is like this baseline look, if you wanna make money on the.
[00:12:31] and you’re not even willing to stop, start here, then leave this alone. And the reason I’m asking you guys is I’m narrowing it down to these two points, like experience of knowing what to look up and what not and what to pick up and what not to pick up, what to spend time on, what not to spend time on.
[00:12:43] That comes with time. I don’t think many people can put in enough time to really develop that skill if they don’t. If they don’t at least have some kind of fun. Now, do I enjoy driving in between? No. But like I enjoy the hunt. Like I would do it for hours. Just the hunt to find something and it’s that little like.me.
[00:13:01] You did. I’m like a hundred bucks, right?
[00:13:03] Jason: Yeah, sure. It’s funny. I guess the thing that strikes me is that the question is really what’s the underlying motivation to learn a trade? And you’re positioning it as joy or liking, the enjoyment of it. I think what Kyle said was the mission driven nature of what, why you’re doing it.
[00:13:21] I think those are two different bits.
[00:13:22] Chris: The, with 2022, you have choices, so you might as well do something that you like. Yeah. It’s not like you used to not have a choice. You’d do something you hate because you had to. Sure.
[00:13:31] Jason: Yeah. But it’s not just about the what you might call.
[00:13:34] Personal satisfaction. It’s also about what you’re trying to achieve in the world for your family, for your community. There’s another layer of motivation, which is not what you might call, I don’t know what the word is, slipping my mind, but it’s something more like egoic need. It’s more foundational than that.
[00:13:48] It’s more about, fulfilling a sense of college destiny service. Yeah.
[00:13:52] Chris: All that. Yeah. It’s not necessarily pleasure, fun. Like you can enjoy solving big problems. You can enjoy, a giant grand accomplishment that you’ve been working towards, so enjoyment is matter. Maybe a better way to, to phrase it rather than fun.
[00:14:05] Yeah. You have to enjoy what you do. All aspects of it. The fun parts, and the not so fun parts that are all, part of a bigger thing. Yeah. And like that’s why I like talking with you guys about this cuz we all have different backgrounds. Okay, for the people, the entrepreneur, whether they’re getting started or they’re on existing, what do they decide to spend their time on?
[00:14:20] Where do they put their efforts into, growing their business. Chris,
[00:14:23] Kyle: I have a question for you. I have a question for you. Do you have more enjoyment out of actually finding the deal or teaching people to find the deal and seeing them actually.
[00:14:36] Chris: That’s a great question. Like neither one of them pops out as being like instant.
[00:14:39] Like I definitely, there’s a bigger opportunity to share and teach. I wouldn’t even say this full time, I wouldn’t do this full time as far as like this is the only source of income kind of thing. But it’s definitely the hunt for me. It’s the finding, like the listening and the packing.
[00:14:53] Forget it. I, that’s not fun. But it’s definitely the hunt, right? It’s definitely a dopamine kind of reaction. But I definitely. Teaching it. And that goes back to the like complex, like for everybody to be like, Oh, like number of times I meet somebody, Chris, you got me into fba. And like I’ve done all this.
[00:15:05] I’m like, that’s great. Like that definitely, boosts my ego. Like I love it. I never did that intentionally. I never did it for the ego boost, but I definitely will take it on the back end.
[00:15:15] Jason: Good thoughts,
[00:15:16] Chris: man. I dunno if you guys are thinking that way about anything with the stuff that you guys do know about self-publishing, right?
[00:15:21] But like Michael used to have a written book.
[00:15:24] Michael: That’s true. I haven’t, I think, yeah, it reflecting myself as like maybe more on the, I don’t know, the the sort of buying side of this for a second. Instead of being the person putting information out there, what have you. . And I think I was seduced into FBA because it seemed easy, quick, some of the passive income promises really, and the size of the win, none of which were incorrect in 2014, particularly, in theory, but I don’t say I, I made a killing or loved that process.
[00:15:45] I think I’ve gradually found my way towards what I enjoy, the aspects of it I enjoy, which for me is definitely more about teaching when it comes to physical products. Does that reflect the sort of people that you are trying to reach and by, extension any of us are trying to reach with any of our sort of marketing efforts?
[00:15:58] I think that there is an, there are different types of motivation. I think that the fun versus the mission thing are different things. I think also necessity. A difficult one because when you have very little money in your bank, you’re probably prepared to go out and do all sorts of manual labor that you might not be prepared to do later.
[00:16:18] And I would say that’s currently away from motivation. Remember, a business coach of mine, Dan, Brad, ought to name and give them credit for this said, Be careful of people who are motivated too much. Buy away from motivation. Maybe it’s more of a British than an American problem. But because it tends to be very strong.
[00:16:31] But when you move away from the problem, for example, you’re building out $500 left in your bank account, or 50, whatever a low number is for you, and you end up with 5,000, 10,000, whatever a comfortable number is for you, your motivation backs off. Whereas if your more vision driven or you really loving the process, depending on what drives you, some people are more vision driven for stop.
[00:16:48] Some are more about enjoyment, right? But whatever it is that’s more of a sort of towards things. So I think there’s also something to be aware of that I think the reality for a lot of people is they oscillate fear and greed when they’re responding to marketing messages, which is, Oh wow, I can make X amount of money and Oh, I’m running out of money.
[00:17:03] I’ve gotta do something un desperate, and neither. Those are ideal motivations. So I think finding the people that are not stuck in over those states, actually surprisingly subtle. I dunno what the answer to that is, but I do know that’s what I think you gotta find out there. That’s what I try and find with clients now, people who are motivated by the potential wins but aren’t being taken over by Reed and who are driven by some necessity to get stuff done, but not necessarily, desperation.
[00:17:27] And so for me, I try and find that middle ground when I’m looking for clients. I dunno if that’s any help to your situation.
[00:17:33] Chris: I’m not looking for clients. I’d like to sell a ton of books and I see model behind that,
[00:17:38] Michael: whatever. It’s, people who buy stuff from you or, buy your, buy into your ideas, okay. Good topic. What’s next? What’s top in mind for me is just trying to manage my VA in a way that doesn’t blows brain, but get stuff done quickly. as anyone else has that I, in other words, how do I, acknowledge that I’m. Poor manager a and I’m likely to remain one and find people and manage people in that situation.
[00:18:03] So in other words, I need to move fast, at least in my perception, and I need to, try new stuff. For example, moving from, audio podcast focused to video podcast cuz I’ve perceived that’s certain market is moving for podcast listeners for example, which is like an unpaid info product, issue.
[00:18:18] . . So that’s what’s, top of my mind. So grateful for. Any thoughts from anyone on that sort of thought
[00:18:23] Jason: management is the hardest thing we do, man. It is the hardest thing next to getting a product that people will pay you money for. Managing people is . . Oh gosh. Yeah. Man, I wish I had some help for you, but I feel like I’m in the same boat in many ways.
[00:18:38] Screwing it up with one group of people or team members. And then after I saw that mess, I screwed up with another group of team members, and, so yeah, it’s, I’m with you there, man. It is a challenge. So
[00:18:51] Chris: you guys want the answer, you want, like the tough love answer.
[00:18:54] Kyle: Don’t hire. Yeah. .
[00:18:56] Chris: No, that’s more of a cop out answer, but, the answer is, it’s your fault.
[00:18:59] So if your VA isn’t doing what you want them to do, it’s your fault.
[00:19:03] Michael: Oh, yeah. I’m not blaming him. I think he’s seeing a pretty good job of managing a difficult boss. Yeah.
[00:19:08] Chris: Yeah, the worst it can be a, I heard you say Oh, I’m not good at this. If you say you’re not good at something, you’re not gonna be good at it.
[00:19:13] You’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be like, and I say about myself, Oh, I’m so unorganized. And like I catch myself saying that you’re never gonna be organized if you tell yourself that you’re unorganized. So it sounds silly, but you might say I need to convince myself that I can do this.
[00:19:25] I can become a good. Instead of just telling yourself, No, I’m just I’m just so bad at it. You’re gonna continue to be bad at it if you continue to tell yourself that. And also, don’t be afraid to fire somebody. Maybe this guy’s no good, or maybe it’s not good enough. Maybe it’s not a good mix.
[00:19:37] And say Look, I’m gonna hire someone else, hire five more people and see if any of them are good, and then fire four of them. Like sometimes you gotta do that. And it’s best for everything long term. Instead of trying to like, make something outta nothing and force something to happen.
[00:19:50] Jason: Yeah, I take your point. P a positive mental attitude is important, right? So yeah,
[00:19:56] Chris: there you go. And neither of you have been like long-term complaining about this, so I’m not trying to like really throw it back at you right now. If you guys have been long-term complaining about some of this, I’d be like, Oh, this is your fault.
[00:20:03] And stop talking about this until you address it. . So hopefully this doesn’t become a long-term thing, this is gonna stay short term and it’s the same thing like any, just blame yourself every time that you can because that’s the only thing you can control. You can’t just like magically hope somebody else is gonna.
[00:20:15] Kyle: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Who was it? It’s, John Maxwell, the leadership guy. He’s got a whole book on all these like laws of leadership, but the one that sticks out to me, the one that I always remember was the Law of the Lid, and that one was all about your organization. Your company, whatever you’re doing, will only rise to the height of your own leadership.
[00:20:37] and is the law, the lid. So unless you are growing in your skill set, unless you’re growing in your leadership abilities, your organization, the people that work for you, what you’re doing will not grow beyond what your cap is. And that was his, takeaway. And it always stuck with me, like just the mental picture of running into the top of the lid of something, so whenever I experienced that, I’m like, All right, where am I? Where am I putting the. on what I’m doing right now and how, and sometimes the answer is it’s not, you might say, I’m not good at it, or That’s not my skill set. Then you have to find the right people that can augment or take that off of your plate.
[00:21:15] It’s I’m not gonna code an app because I’m not gonna learn how to code, but I’m gonna try and find the best coder I can, that I can currently afford, and they’re gonna, do what they’re gonna do. Hopefully create a good product.
[00:21:28] Michael: Yeah. So sum, summarize, the advice is it’s hard, be better.
[00:21:33] And if you don’t get better yeah. It’s your fault, which I totally ignore. I’m not claiming anything else. And if your, if you don’t sort this out, your organization’s gonna be limiting growth. So I think you’re right. I agree with all of these assessments, actually. Yeah. Thank you.
[00:21:46] Kyle: That was that.
[00:21:46] We’ve therapized Michael. I’m sure glad I showed up today. .
[00:21:50] Jason: All right, gents, we have two minutes left. This has been a fun format. Let me just wrap it here and suggest that if you like this format , let us know. And, if you enjoy the show in general, we’d love your highest and best review on the app that you use to listen to it.
[00:22:06] And we’re really grateful for the continuing support of the program. On behalf of Michael, Kyle, and Chris. Thanks everybody for hanging out with us today, and we will talk to you soon.
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