The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Kyle: sourcing school is definitely the push of what we’re working on. , there’s another couple of other tweaks to our, the masterminds that we run. We do a one that’s just specifically for Shopify, users and brand owners that were retooling and relaunching
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[00:01:11] Michael: Welcome to another episode of 41st. I think of the e-commerce calling show, where we talk about, we have a hot takes on topics e-commerce and a slightly broader sometimes today we’re going to talk about our secret projects. What we’ve been up to, we’re going to, , open the kimono in that strange phrase, which Americans use, and I’ll pull back the curtain perhaps a bit more.
[00:01:32] Comfortably. So we have our usual expert panel, , Jason Miles, my fellow conspirator on your things, the e-commerce leader and Kyle Haimer and Chris green as well. Jen, welcome. I’m Michael visa in London. England. Let’s get cracking with our secret projects. , Jason, I think we better start with you cause it could take a while.
[00:01:48] You’ve been a very busy man.
[00:01:51] Kyle: What have you been up to?
[00:01:53] Jason: Okay. Secret projects. Yeah. This last month, a lot of secret projects, , been doing. Charity projects, personal projects and biz projects. , I am super pumped about a new thing we’re working on, , for Omni rocket, which is called the sourcing school.
[00:02:08] And so I might be stealing Kyle’s thunder. I don’t know. But, , anyway, I mentioned that he can do something else. , it’s going to be great. It’s going to be a monthly subscription program, , for people who are interested in learning retail, arbitrage, garage, sailing, , and entry-level. , e-commerce strategies and, , Danny, stock’s going to be our amazing instructor.
[00:02:29] We’re looking for more faculty. If you happen to love garage sales or in-store retail, arbitrage, or Craigslist, arbitrage things that kind of reach out to us, but that’s going to be a blast. We actually literally kick it off tomorrow for registration page is opening tomorrow with us sourcing school.com.
[00:02:46] And I’d say that’s my sort of top of mind on the charity front. I’ll just mention that for Zambia on Friday, we have just an amazing partnership. We’re launching with a large charity called Conway of hope will be feeding 4,850 kids daily hotline. Going forward in 10 schools in the most desperate urban shantytown or slum in Lusaka, Zambia.
[00:03:10] And that’s really exciting. It’s coming together. I was in Springfield working with them a couple of weeks ago, and we’re just thrilled. I’ll be hosting their senior team and it will be a blast this next week. So that’s a ministry charity stuff as well as business stuff.
[00:03:25] Michael: Wow. So busy man, literally flying around the globe.
[00:03:29] Kyle, we better come to you now. Your thunder is being stolen. Can you think of other exciting things? Omni. Rocket sounds great. What other things have you got going on?
[00:03:36] Kyle: Yeah, sourcing school is definitely the push of what we’re working on. There’s another couple of other tweaks to our, the masterminds that we run.
[00:03:45] We do a one that’s just specifically for Shopify users and brand owners that were retooling and relaunching which I’m excited about. And then we’re still kicking around this idea of an Amazon brand mastermind as well. So those who are brand registered sellers that want to do.
[00:04:05] There’s still some push within the community. They get that out the door and people are asking about it. So I think that’s some of the planning stages we’re still having and working through the details over the last month on that. So having mastermind and group memberships available for different people at different stages and different focuses in their e-commerce business.
[00:04:22] It’s been the push and be working on this.
[00:04:24] Michael: Yeah, it makes sense. And it’s really, when you get to have specific masterminds, it’s funny how it, because I’ve been running them for Amazon for years and it doesn’t make a difference if you’ve got somebody I’ve got a fantastic, , so early stages, but very successful, direct to consumer, , mentoring client.
[00:04:38] And, , it’s just not a match for the mastermind because they’re talking about Amazon all the time. So it is really important to be specific. It’s good that you’re developing. , so Chris, you’re always a man who’s doing lots of different stuff. What have you been up to? What’s your secret project?
[00:04:51] Chris: I got to keep the answers short, right? Because this is like hot takes. Cause I, I feel like I’ve done a little bit of everything, which puts me in a good position to give people advice or asking for advice. Although I’m pretty good at giving advice, even when not asked for advice or an opinion trying to get better at that though.
[00:05:08] But it’s something that I am trying to get better at saying no. And I’ve said no to some things lately and historically I’ve been like hesitant and I don’t want to let people down. I want to help out. It feels good to say no, because they know it means that I have time to focus and have clarity around what I actually want to do.
[00:05:29] So I recommend people start saying no a lot, especially if you’re someone who like is a people pleaser and wants to always say yes and all of those things. But what I’ve been thinking about lately is that this project had his plan and it made a lot of sense. I was like, I’ll just get a huge, it’s gonna be awesome.
[00:05:42] It’s got all these right pieces. And then I was like, Like I can’t build that. That’s like a little out of my kind of skillset kind of thing. And what I feel I got. Hooked into, was this idea of being the CEO, being the number one, being the founder, being the entrepreneur, which I think a lot of people are getting hooked on in not correct way because they see the Gary V’s, they see the Instagram and they see all this stuff.
[00:06:07] They think that’s me. That’s me. I want to be, I want to be that. I want to be like, number one. I want to be the founder or CEO top guy not everybody’s made out to be the top guy and I’m learning. I’m not. We’ll be the top bag that would have a lot more fun and a lot more success doing a number 2, 3, 4, whatever.
[00:06:21] It might be. Chief marketing officer instead of executive officer cause marketing, getting attention, like putting things together with new promotions. Yes. I love that I can do that all the time. So one project that a country is completely pivoted on is to be like, wait a minute, someone else is already doing this.
[00:06:36] Let me bring my take and spice for something to a place that already has it. So I don’t have to be number one. And I say this as this was the advice I’m giving myself. So if anybody else has this kind of same position, they can be like, you know what? That kind of sounds like we’re on it. I’m going to do the same thing.
[00:06:51] And if it’s okay for Chris Reed to do it, then it’s going to be okay for me to do, because I think just too many people get caught up in the hustle culture that has. Thinking, I gotta be everything for my Amazon business man, even business, when maybe it’s better to do something else in the sense of focus on your strengths in a business and find the right people to work with.
[00:07:12] And that way you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing, because you’re actually doing something that you’re good at and actually like trying to do all of it. Yeah, it’s advice I’m giving myself if it resonates with someone else even better.
[00:07:24] Michael: Excellent. I’ve got to say it sounds like I’m teaching, but that’s really been part of my journey this month.
[00:07:29] Like I, I listened to on the advice for a friend of mine, Ben Leonard, who’s a very smart guy. He built and sold a business for within three years for seven figures in the Amazon private label space. He’s now a business broker got two kids, young kids. Bright guy. And he mentioned Greg McCoon. He wrote the book essentially.
[00:07:47] And so I read it or listened to it as an audio book and I’m really listening to it cause I really need that. So saying no to your point, Chris. I so resonates with me. I’ve been literally thinking, how do I implement this? And I came to a decision and my poor podcast, content editors, I’m going to reel everything around, but I’m basically saying no to pretty much all podcasts guests from here on who are just coming out of the woodwork and who aren’t relevant to the content we’re trying to produce, which feels like.
[00:08:11] Immediately the white decision, as soon as we did it. So I’m going to make time for the projects to care about and working on profit quiz, which is nearly done now and that sort of on the backend. I’m going to be sending people to whoever can help them best. It may be me in some cases, in a lot of cases, it will be a for the partners or people that we don’t have any affiliate relationship with, but people who can help them best.
[00:08:30] So I’m quite excited about that as a refocusing, what I do to help maximize people’s profit and to make sure that refocuses on Amazon, a lot of our guests recently have been around, off Amazon topics, but old do the e-commerce leader with Jason. So we have a broader set of content already. I think so.
[00:08:47] I’m refocusing on. Private label and focusing specifically in proxy, profit, maximization, and also being reconsidering, how I want this business to serve my life rather than the other way around and make sure that I don’t become a sort of podcasting service for the Amazon community without it actually benefiting me, which I’ve allowed to happen too much.
[00:09:05] So interesting that I’ve had a similar sort of journey to you, Chris. , somehow, we’ve all been busy people. , second round, , anyone who wants to come back in and respond on anything, any thoughts that have come up or, anything else you’ve been doing we should know about?
[00:09:19] Chris: I think people need to know.
[00:09:21] They have permission to pivot. They have permission to be like, Hey, I’m an Amazon seller and you know what? I don’t like it anymore. And I’m going to go get a job. Okay. I think there’s a little bit of a stigma in like the Amazon community or even the entrepreneur community where if you’d like to stop doing one thing to do something else, it’s oh, you failed at X or what?
[00:09:37] No, you pivoted, you changed because you learned something new or you decided something else to fit your life better and just do you, the able to say no. Do the things that you want to do. Don’t feel pressure from outside people because as much as people think, oh, everybody’s like thinking about you.
[00:09:50] No, they’re not. They’re thinking about themselves. EV everything I’m saying, I’m just giving advice to myself, which not everybody do. And I would encourage people every time like an inspirational quote or short post on social media, imagine that person reading it to themselves because that’s literally what 99% of it is when someone’s oh, you should do this.
[00:10:06] Yeah. They figured it out for themselves. They’re telling themselves they just want to share it on Facebook. It’s to document it. And just realize that they’re not telling you what to do with their time. What to do, and it resonates with you. Then you can do it as well, but it’s not them telling you what to do as if there’s some expert genius.
[00:10:18] They’re giving themselves advice. They’re just writing it down.
[00:10:21] Michael: That’s so funny. I literally, that was me this morning. I sat outside having my coffee in this yard and I thought I just saw somebody had moved some heavy objects off the wall. Because there’s a sort of wall, it’s a kind of run for squirrels, cats and neighborhood foxes that run back and forth.
[00:10:35] My wife has observed that we’d put this pot up there out of the way in order to clean the yard. And it was blocking this flow of squirrels. And I put it down. I thought I can’t resist this as a simple, cheap little metaphor here and just. Tell the, is what I was thinking, but you’re bang on. It was exactly what I was thinking for myself.
[00:10:51] The reason it’s worth sharing perhaps to the flip side of that idea is that it’s still true for other people. So I was thinking what simple thing can you move out of the way that will actually free up flow in your life already? And for me, I immediately went and got on. I call with my VA and we’ve rejigged how we deal with the podcast.
[00:11:08] So they go you’re absolutely right. Chris can say fairer than that, except that it’s hopefully also valuable to other people. So that’s my second round. Jason, what’s your.
[00:11:19] Jason: Yeah. , I’m excited about this project. It’s a completely hands-off on my side at this point, but I bought this company, it was a seed company.
[00:11:26] It had the happy garden life, Instagram handle, and three, four years ago. In 2017, five, so five years ago. Good Lord. Anyway it’s been a company with no product for five years, but the Instagram influencer level work has blown up. So at the happy gardening. On Instagram. I think we are 340,000 followers or something like that.
[00:11:50] And it’s really, it’s a cool Instagram profile. So anyway, all that to say I hired Rob crib. Some of you guys would know him and he’s helping me research the seed company opportunities, and we’re going to do seed packages. And it will be a private label and all the proceeds will go to our work in Zambia.
[00:12:10] But he’s helping me research the right mix, producers, it’s not going to be straight private label per se. It’s more like wholesale, but we’re going to figure it out. So that is our own private label brand. I guess you could say is the accurate way to say it. And I’m really excited about it.
[00:12:27] So that’s coming together on the research phase. It might take me six months to figure out that I can’t make any money doing it. Or I might spend a ton of money trying to do it and figure it out. I can’t make any profit but I’m doing it nonetheless. And it will be promoted by her Instagram account and YouTube and all of the email list and socialists where the happy garden lives.
[00:12:45] And we’ll see how it plays out, but I’m excited about it. So it might take some time, but you’ll hear more in the future. I’m sure.
[00:12:53] Michael: Yeah, welcome to private label, dude. It’s been a long time coming, five years, welcome to the party. Yeah, it’s good job. Carla, is there to talk you off the ledge when it gets streak, as it has its moments, but it’s also very exciting Jeremy at that times as well.
[00:13:07] Kyle, what are your I feel like we
[00:13:08] Kyle: have to have a graduation ceremony or something like we shouldn’t graduate private label,
[00:13:13] Michael: graduated or descended, whichever. Kyle has a thing, keeping doing that. One of
[00:13:21] the
[00:13:21] Kyle: things that I’ve been really focused on, probably more so over the last few weeks.
[00:13:27] But it’s really about top of funnel traffic and so forth, Omni rocket, and even within your e-commerce business, leads matter. Now everyone’s focused on the sale, right? It’s all about the sale. It’s all about closing that first customer. And I get that, but that’s only a very small percentage of the customer buying experience.
[00:13:45] So I’ve been thinking a lot about that and also thinking about in those top of funnels, closing to that first sale, what really matters. And after looking at, working with clients and looking at what they’re doing, even on from an e-commerce side, not just the info product side, I come to this conclusion, which I already knew, but it just he got reinforced in my thinking and in my mind, it’s the difference between your product and your.
[00:14:11] And the reason why that you are, that you struggle to get the, your initial sale it’s because your offer is bad. It’s not a good offer to market fit, or it’s just actually just not a good offer. And we get convoluted in as e-commerce sellers thinking that all our product is the. I was like, no, you need to think about your product as the service, it’s providing some sort of tangible benefit to the person, to your potential customer, the offers, how you package it, the offer is what value do they get buying your product, your unique selling proposition. And as I was looking at different funnels and looking at different clients, looking at what they’re doing, I was like, they don’t have traffic.
[00:14:55] Most of the time, most of the time they have an offer problem and that offer will actually help solve the conversion problem that they’re trying to solve as well as if you’re presenting a great offer, you’re going to deal with your conversion. You won’t have to worry about traffic. And so I think that really got me thinking about what makes a great offer.
[00:15:12] And that’s been my journey of. We two weeks and we’ll probably continue next time we talk about this in a month or so we’ll probably have a different take on my thinking on it. But I do think that e-commerce sellers needs to get much more clear on what it is that they’re offering their customers that is beyond just a product.
[00:15:31] Michael: I’m so glad to hear you say that because I’m a bit obsessed with this differentiation. People talk about what products and market match or product market fit, which is critical obviously. And you know about that because the reviews allows you. You’re good. So on Amazon, it’s fairly concrete and there are equivalents of that in any platform.
[00:15:45] , but the office is a separate thing. The offers, what people buy, they don’t buy products. And we know this because you only get the product after you bought an Amazon or any kind of e-commerce. , for anyone who’s thinking about this, there is a genius book called a hundred million dollar offers. I’m not an affiliate for this, partly because it’s free.
[00:15:58] This isn’t free because it’s the print edition, but the Kindle and audio book a free by a guy called Alex Hormoz. , and it’s just brilliant. It’s yeah, it’s not e-commerce specific, but it’s just, it makes you think and rethink and really think and hone and just craft an offer to your point, Carl.
[00:16:13] So I love that, that thinking it’s a good
[00:16:15] Jason: book, man. The audible edition of that is great as well. I listened to that and I have listened to it repeatedly now. Yeah.
[00:16:22] Michael: Yeah. I’m on my second. Listen to that as well. So yeah, a hundred percent endorsement all around here. Then folks. So final thoughts to take away any final things that you think people should know about or, , any final thoughts generally in response to today’s topics.
[00:16:34] Jason: To me, the summertime is a good time to have a spreadsheet that three months. To me is an interesting thing to see, okay what can we achieve in the next three month? Obviously that might be not a family stuff. It might be a lot of personal vacation, all of those things count.
[00:16:51] And but I like to look at it that way. So I would just as everybody out your summer by August, what can you cram in both fun and work and meaning give back efforts as well.
[00:17:07] Michael: Yeah. And I said, dear, I rarely sense plumber somewhere in that way. So let’s say a good wake up for me. Chris, your thoughts.
[00:17:15] Chris: Just as I say people should be saying, no, the things you do say yes to you need to go all in on and say, look, I’m actually going to do it. I’m going to commit this summer to actually doing these things. And I think people, they underestimate how much they can get that in a week in a month in a summer, you can get a lot done if you like actually focus on it.
[00:17:34] So that’s the other side of the coin of saying no, it’s like the things you are saying yes to. You need to commit to and focus and put the other stuff on the back burner and actually get something done and you have to figure out a problem that your customers have and solve it. And then, boom, you’re a piece of cake.
[00:17:48] The rest is easy.
[00:17:50] Michael: , so fascinating. Listen to what you’re saying is basically me talking to myself. And to your point earlier, Chris, you were saying people giving advice to generally give advice themselves. It’s the physician heal thyself thing. I think you’re right, but also it’s still a genuine value to others.
[00:18:04] So it’s great to hear you saying that. I think for me, I just want to endorse what you just said really? I’m I am saying no, I’m putting systems and people in place to push the wrong types of things way in order to make space. And you’re absolutely right. The other thing I’ve got to commit to is getting an audio book finished within the next two, three months and getting this profit funnel finished this quiz funnel finished within the next week so that I can start driving traffic and seeing out performance.
[00:18:28] So I’m excited about that as well. Kyle, take it home.
[00:18:30] Kyle: I think I love that plan out your summer what it is you’re going to do both fun and work and what you want to accomplish. I think that yeah, saying no focusing on the things that are going to be important that you want to really hone in on and spend your time, energy on that.
[00:18:48] And until you get the result, but then also to Chris’s point be okay if it doesn’t work. Let it fail. Some stuff will fail, but you’re going to learn of what it is that worked and didn’t work, and then apply that to the next version of it or next iteration of it, or the pivot that you make. And that’s how you get better.
[00:19:06] Don’t be afraid to fail. So go out and fail the summer. That’s my. Okay.
[00:19:11] Michael: Excellent. On the upbeat commerce leader, helping you come as leaders fail more quickly. If you want to find us for more good stuff, when the calling app, which is on accounting on iPhone only, we’ve got more than a hundred followers now.
[00:19:24] And quite a lot of people listening in on that. It seems to vary greatly, but it’s some of the topics really. So there’s clearly an audience there. Come and join us there. If you are on podcasts, you can find us on Spotify, apple many other platforms. If you are on apple or Spotify, finally, please do give us a rating and a five stars to give us, to give other people who are in your situation, the chance to know if we’re worth listening for, and to give us a bit of motivation to keep producing this content.
[00:19:49] A final thing to say is to our expert panel today. Jason Miles Kyle Haimer Chris green. I’m Michael Veazey. Thanks so much for listening to the e-commerce leader.
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