Motivation, Authenticity, and Discipline with Scott Hilse

What's going on guys. Welcome to episode 5 of Behind the Mindset. On this episode, we have a very special guest with us, our friend, the one and only Scott Hilsy. Uh, this episode was recorded immediately after Jared had beat Scott in a round of golf. We had an incredible time together recording this episode, and I hope that you guys get a lot of value out of it. If you do, as always, please share this with your friends, family, and your team. Sit back, relax, and enjoy Behind the Mindset, Episode 5. Thank you.

Hey, what's going on everybody? Scott Hills here with you today. Let's just get right into this. I'm here with the one and only Jared Goetz. I'm talking the second fastest growing Shopify store of 2017, but there is so much more where that came from. I'm blessed to be here in this amazing house. We just got done playing some golf. I was a little rusty. I lost, I'm not gonna lie, by a lot. But, uh, we're going to just go from there. So I just want to take this opportunity to ask Jared some awesome questions that I know you guys will find extremely beneficial. I always tell you guys, never listen to anybody who's never done whatever it is you're trying to do, or you're going to end up not doing it, just like him. He has done exactly what most of you are probably trying to do, if not all of you, to a large extent. So this is an amazing opportunity. Thank you so much for being here, Jared.

Absolutely, man. Thanks for coming out here to Florida to play some golf with me. Absolutely.

I'll get you next time though. So my first question is, I see that you credit— you do a lot of meditation, and I was wondering, could you tell us how much credit you think meditation does to building these multiple 7, 8-figure businesses like you've done?

So that's a good, good point. I think that meditation itself is one like tool and one practice that helps you get in the right mindset, but it's about your overall day, about your overall plan. That's just one piece of it. You know, meditation is cool because we live in a world today where like, you know, everyone watching this video, I'm sure, you know, have the same problems as me where you go on Instagram, you scroll through, and then you close Instagram just to go reopen Instagram because you're so trained to have your mind taken off the focus that you want to be focusing on. With meditation, you kind of set your intention right in the first part of your day. You're actually, you know, you're observing your thoughts and seeing what's going through your head and as opposed to getting pulled in different directions by all the stimuli that our world currently has. So it's almost like I look at meditation as an exercise. It's just like working out where you want to train your muscles to get strong and get fit, you know, build muscle memory, get better at golf, whatever it is. I look at meditation as exercise to train your brain to be able to actually stay on track with thoughts longer because anyone who's ever achieved anything great They don't— it's not something that happens in an hour. It's something that happens over weeks, right? Days, long amount of time. And I use meditation to, you know, practice being able to keep thoughts on there.

Absolutely. So I was reading your book Overnight Success, which I highly suggest everyone out there to go read. It's an amazing book. And what I really liked about when you're talking about meditation, you said some days you love all 20 minutes of it and just slips by, but sometimes you get 8 minutes in and you think, well, I could just be like, 8 minutes, that's enough, and then go on. And you said— and the point I like what you made about that is, and I make this point about going to the gym every every day. If you slack off on that one aspect, you're going to start slacking off on all your aspects of your life. And same with waking up at 4:30 AM. I like what you said. You're like, if I sleep in until 8 AM, which is so funny, you're like, I'm fucked for the day. But you say when you wake up at 4:30, your first thought is I don't want to get out of the bed. And then you get out of bed because that sets the standard for the rest of the day in terms of discipline.

Yeah, I mean, because your mind could be your best friend or it could be your enemy. Absolutely. And oftentimes it's your enemy. Like when you, you know, if you say sometimes the night before, I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate to this, and you could too. You might be really motivated to go to the gym in the morning, right? And you're like, I'm gonna go hit it really hard. I'm gonna be healthy all week. Maybe it's Sunday, I don't have a great week. And then Monday morning rolls around, you wake up and you're just like, your mind's like, no, you should rest more. You know, you need the rest. You'll feel more refreshed if you keep sleeping in. 'Cause your mind just wants you to do whatever's comfortable, whatever doesn't get you out of your comfort zone. But you gotta learn to quiet the mind or else what ends up happening is a compounding effect. It's not just not going to the gym, you're not gonna gain that one bit that you gain from it. It's actually compounding. So if you say you're gonna go to the gym in the morning and then you don't go that morning, you're actually losing self-confidence. You're not being true to yourself. You're hurting yourself more than not just going to the gym. Hurting yourself on a subconscious level. Because it's— if you can't be true to yourself, if you can't do what you know you need to do for yourself, how can you do that for others? You know, how can you go into a business relationship and feel confident that you're gonna be able to achieve what you need to achieve? So it's deeper than just doing what you want to set yourself to do. Absolutely.

It all comes down to discipline, like you said.

Yeah, and discipline is much different than motivation. You know, people are always, you know, waiting to be motivated, but discipline you need to have every single day.

Exactly. And that's what, that's why I like again about what you said in the book. It's about like any, like motivation comes and goes, but if you have discipline, it's consistent. And that's— Gary Vee was talking about that too. He's like, motivation, it comes and goes, but if you're driven, you'll knock down anything that's in your way.

100%. And like another thing to note is like when you're focused on discipline, there, there's a compounding effect. So if you do something 2 days in a row, it's more than 2x the initial thing. So like, let's just use the gym for the example. If you go to the gym 2 days in a row, the benefit is more than 2 times going to the gym once because you've gained more health, you gain more muscle, and you've also gained more confidence. So it's actually like 3 or 4x. And every day that you are disciplined, it's more than the— it's hard to describe what I'm trying to say, but it's more than like, if you go— if you're disciplined 7 days in a row, You have a compounding effect that grows and grows and grows every single day. That's why it's important to stay on it.

And when we're on the course, I was talking about David Goggins, and he says the same thing. He says a rest day is great for the body, terrible for the mind, because then you allow yourself to slack off. So that's why, like, I encourage you guys at least, like, I work out probably 4 to 5 days a week with weights, but on those 2 days, I'm at least running a couple miles because it's— once you break that consistency, then that starts to slip and then other things start to slip and then you find yourself right where you started.

Yeah.

Okay, so we talked about this a little bit on the course, but I was reading one of your articles and you got hacked by a 17-year-old German hacker and you were somehow able to negotiate your way out of having anything basically bad happen. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, it was freaking crazy. I was actually— so yeah, I got hacked. If you guys hadn't heard, you can look it up, the story's online, but So I was out to dinner and I was out of town, I was traveling, and I saw a notification on my phone that someone tried to spend $40,000 on my Amex card on a domain from GoDaddy. So I was like, they said, is this fraud? I clicked yes. I didn't really think much more about it. And then I was away, so I didn't know how to get back to the hotel. So I went to go to my GPS and my GPS wouldn't load and my phone wasn't working. So I thought maybe like my phone wasn't like, maybe the auto bill didn't get paid. So I'm like, let me get back to the hotel. I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna make sure my phone bill is paid. I go on my phone website, I try to log in, my password's not working. So I'm like, alright, I'll go reset the password. So I sent a password reset to my email to reset my phone carrier login, and I go to my email to log in, and it says your password has been reset an hour ago. So that's when everything's like, oh my goodness, what's going on? And then about 2 minutes later, I get a phone call from an unknown number. And I answer it and I go, "Hello?" And they go, "Send me 3 Bitcoin and I'll give you back your shit." And I'm like— and it's like 2 o'clock in the morning.

Were they using like voice disguises at all?

I don't think so.

Okay.

It was just, they had an accent and I'm like, "Oh my God." So my first instinct was like, you know, get defensive. But then I was like, maybe I can like sympathize with this guy. Maybe I can add a human element to this conversation as opposed to like hacker versus victim. Maybe I can like communicate with him at a deeper level and get on that same page. So I'm like, like, hey man, like, why are you doing this to me? I'm a good person. I do— you just want to screw people over. And he's— he was in the mindset of like, the world is about like, like people fuck each other over and whoever fucks each other over the most wins. That was his mindset. And I started going down the path of like, you know, if you keep doing this and your whole world is about people fucking each other over, Your world is gonna be a really dark place. You're gonna create that for yourself. And we started talking and he started like kind of connecting with me a little bit. Then I discovered he was actually 17 years old. So I started relating to him like a, you know, like a younger brother. And I'm like, listen, man, one day you're gonna get depressed, you're gonna have anxiety, you might start using drugs because of all these negative emotions you're building up from these horrible things you're doing to people.

Right.

And then you're gonna have no way to escape. You may even go ahead and kill yourself one day. And the guy, really powerful. And he was just like, man, like, I just need the money. I'm like, yo, if you need money, let's just use this as an opportunity. Like, maybe you got lucky getting on the phone with me today. Maybe like this was like meant to be and I'm going to change the course of your life. If you need money, I'll send you some money. But I want you to promise to stop hacking people and I want you to give me back my shit right now.

Amazing.

And he gave it back to me and, you know, I didn't have to give him any money. And I think I actually changed his life, which was probably the coolest part.

That's incredible. So I know one of your first successes when you were 20 or 21?

It started when I was 20.

Was Electric Fury. And it was all about promoting concerts and bigger and bigger concerts. And knowing you, you just wanted to go bigger and bigger and bigger. And then once you were telling me on the course, one time you got way over your head and it kind of came crashing down. And so that's right when the perfect opportunity came where you took one of the most famous apps that most of you guys probably know, Yik Yak. He was one of the people responsible for really blowing it up. He directed the tour, the campus tour. I'm sure a lot of you in college might have saw that, designed the bus and everything. And then from there is when you got into dropshipping, correct?

Yeah, pretty much. I got involved with Yik Yak. Well, first I was doing the concerts and I was like, you know, the first show I ever threw, we made like $40,000. Right. That's what my mom made in a year almost. Yeah. Oh my God, this is a crazy crazy business. I was 20. So I started going after it and building these shows. And then, you know, I didn't have a background in finance and I was getting in over my head and I had too much ambition and energy and it was— I wasn't really centered. I was just go, go, go, go, go all the time. And I ended up like going too fast and crashing and burning. And then yeah, I got involved with Yik Yak, started using the same promotion methods for the shows to actually promote the app and help them grow from 100,000 users to 10 million users. In about 4 months, we did a tour. If you guys ever saw a tour bus.

That's 4 months?

Yeah, that's 4 months.

Oh my God, I didn't know that part.

Yeah, it's quick. And I was on the bus the whole time. We went down the West Coast. But while I was at Yik Yak, I was really lucky because a friend of mine who was importing products from China and selling to retail, I always was interested. He called me one day and he's like, Jared, I have the coolest product ever. I need to send you one. I know you're really good at marketing. You're in the college scene. I'm not gonna tell you what it is, but I'm gonna send you one from China right now. So I'm like, what could he be sending?

Right.

And 2 weeks later I get this big package and it's heavy. I'm like, what is this thing? It's from China. I cut it open, open it up, and it's a hoverboard. But it's before anyone had ever seen hoverboards. Right. So I'm like, no way this thing's gonna work. Like, you can't ride this. Like, how's it gonna balance? I started riding it around and all every— like, I was riding around college campuses at spring break, so I was with Yik Yak.

Right.

And everyone's like, where do you get one of those? Like, Like, how much was it? And I'm like, yo, they're not for sale and I don't know how much they are. And then I'm like, I gotta start selling them. So first thing I did was I built a website, I found a supplier, and I started handing out business cards to everyone who asked me for one. And then every time someone bought one, it would get shipped from the supplier.

Oh, so you weren't even going through Oberlo or anything? You were just basically doing it yourself?

No, but I was making like $1,000 profit on each one. Yeah. So it was just like, you know, if I sold 2 in a week, that was great. I'm talking my salary. But then I got obsessed with how do I sell 1,000 of these and make a million dollars? Yeah, so I'm asking everyone, how would you sell more of these? Like talking to every single person I knew. And then eventually I got linked up with some social media influencers in LA, and there were, you know, a bunch of kids like Nash Grier, Hayes, and like, oh yeah, all these other kids are like 10 million plus followers. I'm like, guys, you think we could sell 1,000 of these? Like, 1,000? We can sell 10,000. Oh my god. So I was like, alright, so if you guys want to get in on the company, you can be partners. Everyone invested a little bit of money and we built a really big brand really quickly. Although hoverboards were a fad, it showed me how much potential there was in e-commerce. So we did like a quarter million dollars our first month. And then yeah, from there I went to China to find more viral products. It's a little bit of a long story, but after selling products on Amazon and at trade shows and on Shopify with holding inventory in my warehouse, I tried dropshipping again after the hoverboards, right, using Oberlo and that whole method. And that's why I built the store that went from $0 to $2 million in 60 days.

And that's what I was going to talk to you about. You only have one person above you, and that was Kylie Jenner, Kylie Cosmetics, the youngest self-made billionaire ever, arguably. So yeah, could you tell us about how crazy that experience was from going from zero to $2 million in 60 days and how drastically that affected your life and your mental space.

Yeah, it was actually— yeah, that was probably the most dramatic life-changing 5 days I've had. And that's kind of like the whole overarching view of my book is like, that's the overnight success. Yeah. But like, what's the whole background that builds up to it? Right.

Right.

Like you try enough things, something's gonna work and you're gonna get lucky and you can utilize the skills and muscles and memory and everything you've built up to blow it up. So I started dropshipping a product that I had sold physically, so I knew the audiences, I knew who to target. And right when I started selling it, like the first day it was profitable. And I decided, let me just try duplicating all my ad sets a bunch of times and see what happens. Yeah. And I went like, first day was like $500 in sales, next day was $2,000 in sales. And in one day, dropshipping, so I'm like, you know, fulfilling orders, answering customers, but then I had to drive from LA to Florida because I was moving. And it was a 5-day drive, like 10 to 18 hours a day. So I had to hire someone to run my ads and I had to hire a VA to answer all my customers. And during that drive, we went from $2,000 a day, we did, I think, $7,000 the first day of the drive, $14,000 the second day of the drive. So we just kept duplicating everything and grow it. And I'm like looking at my phone like, No way, like I'm not telling anyone about this. This is a secret. And then we hit $35,000 the next day in sales. And like I showed my girlfriend Madeline who's sitting next to me and it was like, I'm like, just keep it on the DL. Like if this stops working tomorrow, like I'm thankful for it, but you know, it can't keep working. And then the next day we hit $50,000 a day in sales. And at that point I'm just like, I'm not telling a soul about this thing.

Yeah.

And a month later the store's doing $50,000 a day. For the whole month. I'm like, all right, maybe it will work. Yeah, so it might— I mean, it just kept going on for, you know, for the first 60 days before we hit any issues or anything.

Right, so that's something we have in common. And I was scaling vertically. So for those of you who don't know, when I lived in LA, when I was an Uber driver, as all of you definitely know, and as I was driving back is when my store took off, but not to the extent of yours. It was like when I left, I think I was getting like $80 a day. But then by the end, I took 3 or 4 days to get home. By the time I got home, I was doing about $300 a day, and then in the next week, that's when I started doing thousands a day. So I was scaling vertically and slowly. I know you're a huge proponent of horizontally scaling, which compounds really, really quick. So in today's modern age, would you agree that horizontally scaling, which means you're scaling the ad sets wide, as in duplicating instead of scaling the ad sets with budget, would you say that is the best option to do?

So, you know, the Facebook algorithm changes all the time. And like kind of the horizontal scaling method kind of tricks the algorithm sometimes to get really low CPMs and it just performs better. But I wouldn't say one way is better than the other. Every time we scale something, we try both methods.

Okay.

So, but like the biggest wins I've had, like the, you know, we did $1 million in December selling a hoodie. Right. It was duplicated. And I did, you know, $600,000 in January selling a windshield cover, and that was also duplicating. But we also always try testing, you know, big ad sets as well.

And I remember we were talking a couple months about it, about how like Facebook, when they give suggestions about Facebook ads, ironically Facebook sometimes is not the best people to listen to because they want to keep it simple, they want to keep it user-friendly, and they don't want you to trick that algorithm so you keep spending more money. So Facebook says you shouldn't scale ads for like 7 days. I know you're a really aggressive scaler and you're more about the 24-hour scale, correct? You're more cutthroat.

Yeah, every single day. I mean, the thing is like when you talk to Facebook on the phone, they have Facebook's intention in their mind. So they just want to do what's best for Facebook. And the people you're talking to have never scaled businesses before.

Exactly.

So they don't really know what they're talking about. So if you get the opportunity to schedule a call with a Facebook marketing expert, I wouldn't waste your time.

Yeah, I talked to them once before and then they wanted me, they really pressured me to do it again because they wanted me to test the CBOs. I just never picked up that phone. They've called me like at least 10 times. I'm just like, I really don't want to waste my time because when they unroll something like CBOs or like their carousel ads or something, they try to push that to as many users as possible to get that data back. They don't really know if it's gonna work on a large scale or not. So they're letting you be the test subject. So that's just something to be wary of for everyone out there.

Yep. Yep, 100% agreed.

So now that we're in the dropshipping realm of everything, where would you say you see most people go wrong in dropshipping? Like whether it be mindset, whether it be scaling, product selection. Could you just talk about that for a little bit?

Yeah, I think most commonly what's wrong, you know, the wrong mistake people will make is that they try to start selling something that just because they like it, they think it's going to sell.

Exactly.

Like, I like golf, so I'm going to just try to sell golf tees, and I'm going to put all my effort into selling one thing when in reality, 1 in 10 things will sell profitably.

Right.

So people might think that, why would this weird gadget sell well? Well, you just don't know. Another thing is people think that you need to have really good experience expensive made creatives to sell a product. I've actually personally, I've spent thousands of dollars on nice videos to advertise products with and then posted the same product with like a little iPhone video that took me 10 seconds and that video got me half the cost per purchase as like the $1,000 full production videos. So I guess the overarching answer there is like what we think is going to work, even me, like what I think is going to work I know that it's just what I think and it's not actually what's going to work. You have to test different things no matter what. Nobody knows the answers.

And you have to follow the data. Guys, I know I've mentioned this story at least 5 times in my videos, but it's such a great thing to bring up. This guy messaged me and he goes, hey, listen, I've lost $800 this month testing this one product, but I know it's a good product. I know it's a good product. Do you have any tips? I go, listen, man, you could have avoided losing like $700 of that $800 if you would have just looked at the data. The data doesn't care. The market doesn't care about your feelings. Doesn't matter if you want to— if you're going to do dropshipping, this isn't the business to get into like to like do, to like express your passion. You know, like he was saying he loves golf, but if a golf product doesn't sell well, he's not going to just keep pushing that because it makes him feel good. It's all about what the— this is a very personal business. But it's not about your personal side, it's about the other personal side of the customers you're marketing to.

For sure. And then on that point too, like when people hold on to things too long, like people will be trying a lot of things and then they get a little bit of traction, meaning that they start losing less money or they start breaking even, and then they put all their eggs in that basket.

Yeah.

And they're like making $5,000 a day in sales but like losing money or breaking even and like, I know I can get it to work, I need to tweak my ads, I need to do it. And it's like, no, like you're just going down a rabbit hole. Try the next product or make a drastic change. Try a totally different creative, change the price, you know, change the offer on your website, change your landing page, because you're not gonna get it to be super profitable just by tweaking your ads at that point.

And I liked what you talked about, how you did the high production video and then your iPhone video did like better. So the psychology behind that, for those who don't know, is when you're launching ads, you You don't want to think about launching an ad. You want to think about launching content that people are going to find on their timeline anyway, whether it be from a friend or something. That's why you see the most successful dropshipping products have tens of millions of views, just because people are sharing it because how cool the product is and how natural it feels. If your copy or your video starts with a question like the 1990 newspaper advertisement tactics, like Do you have a problem with emphysema? And stuff like that doesn't work anymore. It has to be natural and direct to the point. People aren't like— it's all about capturing the people's attention, but in a very subtle way where they don't really feel like they're being sold, but they are being sold. So you've had tons of success with dropshipping since you started in 2017, correct?

Yeah.

Okay, how many 7-figure-plus businesses dropshipping-wise have you started?

Um, around 7 or 8 different stores now.

That's insane.

It's because we have a formula. We test on a general store, right? And then we find what works, and then we build a single product store and we scale it up.

And yeah, that's something that I was very surprised when we connected about. You were doing the single product format too. Yeah. So like, that's what it's all about. Like, you have a great system. You test on a multi-product store, and then any ones that works, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you put in that extra work and Just like the Facebook ads, you put in that extra work where most people don't and you build those stores out because then the pixel data soaks in and people don't have as many options to click around and it seems more like this product is so good and so big and so just revolutionized, it needs an entire website dedicated.

Yeah, and because of that, we find that the conversion rates sometimes go from, on our general store, they might be like 3% and then our single product stores, they get up to like 80%. 8 or even 10%. Right. Which means if you're driving 1,000 visitors, you're going to either make 30 sales or 100 sales. 100 sales could make you very profitable while 30 sales can be making you, you know, losing money. So that's, you know, one of the positive externalities of building a single product store.

Another thing, we kind of touched on this earlier, like you guys out there, you got to be very wary of the inauthentic people. You guys know me, I'm very genuine, very authentic, and transparent. Transparent. We were talking on the golf course about how there's so many fake people in this industry, and that's why we connect too, because it's like rare to find someone like real and genuine out there. But what a lot of these people are doing, guys, they're making either draft orders and they're like, yeah, I made $500,000 this month, but it was all draft orders. They just put in tons of fake orders. Or like I was talking to people in LA, they know a lot of dropshippers who are gurus online, but they're not— they're only fulfilling 20-30% of the orders. So like, you can kind of tell who's faking it and who's real. Like, you can't fake the funk at all. So yeah, I was wondering if you had anything to add about that.

It's just, yeah, it kills me to see things like that just because like I believe in karma. I believe in like if you do wrong, like something wrong is going to happen to you, whether it's now, whether it's in 20 years from now, whether it's, you know, 50 years from now. It's going to come back. But there are a lot of people out there that see this business model of information and coaching and it sounds all glorious You'll see kids who do $100,000 in sales, maybe they net $10,000. Now they're like, you know, now you should come learn from me. And this is happening more and more and more as this becomes more of a popular business model. So you just got to be careful who you learn from, really.

And it gives dropshipping a bad name, which is unfortunate too, because there's a lot of good people in dropshipping just doing it very authentically. But then these people, as with anything, come in and try to ruin it for everybody by just like just being so stupid. And then one thing I always talk about is the real— real recognize real. The real can recognize the real. The fake can't recognize the real, and vice versa. So the real can recognize the fake and the real, but the fake can only recognize the fake, not the real. So that's why, like, if you keep it real, like with the karma and everything, if you keep it real, if you're yourself and you know you're being true to yourself and authentic and just a good person, you're gonna notice those people too, and that's who you're gonna start collaborating with. And even when you get that ad, you're going to be able to see right through that person.

Don't take shortcuts, guys. Not worth it. It's not worth, you know, scamming people, not fulfilling orders just to make a few extra thousand dollars. Like, put in the work, do it right, build something sustainable. That's what it's all about.

And it's just like you told that German hacker, you're like, eventually it's going to eat away at you. It's going to eat— not right now because you're like, oh, I got this money, but it's going to eat away at you. Karma is going to catch up. It's just going to be terrible.

It shapes your reality. It's not even just karma. Literally, like, if you are making 1,000 orders a day and you're only fulfilling 200 of them and scamming 700 people, your reality is that that's how people make money. This is the way to make money. Scamming people is okay. And then that's going to compound into something else. Now, what's the next step? You're going to start robbing people? You're going down the wrong path. Just always do the right thing. That's just kind of a mantra that I live by. I always want to do the do the right thing by people.

So when I was in Berlin visiting Oberlo, I was talking to Thomas Sliemus. I had a 3.5-hour dinner with him, and I know you know him too personally. And we got on the topic of the future of dropshipping, and the future of dropshipping is definitely expanding from just China fulfillment centers, like United States fulfillment centers, just go into all these countries. So everyone knows the one problem with dropshipping is the shipping time, and There's ways to get around that, but the best way to get around is to eliminate and just, you know, start competing with Amazon and just have the fast shipping time. So where do you see the future of dropshipping come from here? Because I've been hearing it since I started in 2016. Oh, dropshipping is gonna die. I was at Alex— I was at Ty Lopez's house. Alex Murr says, I give dropshipping 3 months before it's dead. And that was a year ago. Like, it's gonna adapt, and I want to know your thoughts on how it's gonna always adapt, because dropshipping is just a business, man.

Model. It's not a business. It's just the simple model of not holding inventory and selling products. Why would that die? It's not going to die. Well, first of all, AliExpress, I think that's going to die. I think that AliExpress is no longer going to be fulfillment in the next year. There are suppliers in China that can get products out in 7 to 10 days. That's not that bad. If you have a proactive customer support approach and you go ahead and you reach out to them with an email right when they make an order and you say, Hey, just a heads up, this order is going to take 7 to 10 days. People aren't going to file chargebacks. They're not going to be mad. They're going to be happy you reached out to them. But if you don't say anything and then it takes 7 to 10 days and they're wondering and then they get angry, that can hurt your business. Now, I don't want to get into too much of it, but we're actually building something pretty cool right now that we think is going to shape the future of dropshipping and allow people like, you know, the viewers here to actually dropship US-branded products from their store to their customers.

Fast.

Fast, yeah. So we're working with some fulfillment centers right now where we're taking in products that are high volume, putting them in the fulfillment centers, and then shipping in 1 to 2 days. And that can be the future of it. However, most people aren't going to be able to afford to do that on their own in the beginning, but if they join a community of other people that are selling the same products, which is what we're doing, we can put the inventory there and then ship it out for them. And that's the way I see it moving in the future.

100%. I completely agree with you right there. One thing I do want to cover, just so no one in the YouTube comments starts attacking you for this, when you say AliExpress is going to die in the next year, you mean in terms of dropshipping collaboration. Like AliExpress is definitely going to be there with Alibaba because of how massive of a company that is. But you're talking more about fulfillment for dropshipping stores.

Yeah, well, okay, AliExpress will definitely be here for years to come. They're a multi-billion dollar company. Company, but I'm saying that if you have a dropshipping business and you're using AliExpress, like, it's great for testing products, but once you get traction, you have to move away from it because it's not sustainable. You know, when you have thousands of orders coming through every day and they're taking 20 to 30 days to get out, you know, even just keeping your chargebacks under control— if your chargebacks go above 1%, Shopify Payments is going to shut you down. Then you need to get a new merchant, and then when you get a new merchant Shopify charges you 2% on top of your merchant accounts, so you're paying 5% fees and you have angry customers. All I'm saying is that people that are solely using AliExpress to ship, I don't think that's going to work out after about a year from now.

Absolutely. And then also with the ePacket dropping out because of the new Chinese trade laws, there's just a lot of variables. So there's nothing better you guys can do than have the products you're selling be exactly where your customers are. —just in terms of returns, that's way easier, shipping time obviously, and just overall quality control.

Yeah, and just to put a little teaser out there, we have something coming that will solve all those problems. I can't wait. And Scott knows about it.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's gonna be amazing. Okay, so something I really liked about your book, about what you talked about, was indirect investments. And this is something I've talked about, especially in my BMW i8 video. Sometimes You have to do stuff that doesn't make sense on paper in order to further yourself just in life in general. For— I always told the story about how when I bought that Lexus IS 250, I couldn't afford at the time. I had to, you know, finance it. My parents said, I'm for sure I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna get it revoked or whatever, or repoed, and I'm never gonna afford $430 a month, which is what I was paying. So Something still told me I need to buy that, you know. Something told me like if I talked to a financial advisor, they definitely would have said don't buy that. But when I bought that, that's what led to me meeting Tai Lopez and just me giving that overall confidence of like seeing what I'm doing on the screen translate into something in real life. And same with this BMW i8 I just bought. Like a lot of people, usually lower, would look up and be like, make snarky comments and be like, why would you buy waste your money, but they don't understand that like there's so much more money where this comes from. Grant Cardone talks about this all the time. Like, he's like, imagine the ocean and you taking a bucket and you scooping that bucket and it's full of money. That's what the market is like out there. So to have that limited mindset of saving any penny, like Dan Lok always says, like this whole budget thing, you don't have a spending issue, you have an income issue. And so when you actually start making achievements and stuff, it's completely it's completely okay to make those indirect investments into yourself because indirect investments will further you.

100%, and it's hard to quantify indirect investments. A lot of people just don't understand this, and I don't expect people to understand this just yet, especially, you know, if you're working a job where you're getting paid $50,000 or $100,000 a year, like, it just doesn't make sense. But when the caliber of your business grows, let's use an example, like, The deals that I'm doing now with people like yourself and other people in the space, they're always gonna be 6-figure deals, whatever we're doing. So if I'm traveling to go on a business meeting, am I gonna go stay in a Holiday Inn or am I gonna go stay in the Ritz-Carlton? Well, I'm gonna go stay in the Ritz-Carlton, not because I think I deserve better than the Holiday Inn, but obviously I wanna treat myself well. But when I go into the meetings that I'm having there, I want to feel 10 out of 10. I want to hit the spa. I want to be in the right mindset, and I want to have good energy so that I connect with people the right way so that the deal actually happens. You know, if I roll into a meeting and I'm like, I feel like I just came from the Holiday Inn, I feel fake. I'm like, you know, and nothing wrong with the Holiday Inn, by the way, but just saying, like, at this caliber, like, if I'm traveling across the world to go meet with someone, I want to be feeling my best. Another thing, like, I have a Lamborghini Huracán and it's cool, like, you know, when you drive it you feel like you're driving a Lamborghini Huracán. So when you have a phone call with someone, you just feel good, you know, you joke around, you're in a good mood. I used to drive a Nissan Maxima, nothing wrong with Nissan Maximas, I drove it for like 4 years, but like I just felt like I was driving a Nissan Maxima. So it puts you in a different mindset. So although I spent $225,000 on the car, The potential, you know, meetings and the potential conversations and interactions that I've had, I think outweigh that $225,000 by a lot, especially over time. I mean, I like being in a house like this. I wake up every morning and look around and feel really good. Absolutely. That allows me to put out my best content. That allows me to get inspired. That allows me to think of good ideas. And it all starts in the mind. So if you're waking up in a place that you hate to to be in, how are you gonna have the beautiful thoughts in your mind that you need to have to create something amazing? And that's kind of the theory of indirect investments. Now, one more thing I wanna touch on is your standards. You know, sometimes it's really hard to get to that point. It's hard to get a house, like, you know, it's out of reach. But if you push yourself a little bit and you push yourself past your boundaries, nobody's taking it away from you.

Exactly.

Like, I'm never downgrading from here. But to get to here, it was kind of scary. Yeah, but hell no is anyone taking it away from me. Exactly. So yeah, holding on to it's way easier than getting it.

And when you do start living this lifestyle, it makes you become more consistent in your— because you now see what's possible. You can, you can hear and like look online at what's possible. When you feel it, like, that's why I have this whole thing where I do only lit Airbnbs. Like, everywhere I go, it has to be lit Airbnb. Wait till you see the lit Airbnb in Miami when I'm interviewing Noah Tucker coming up here. It's gonna be crazy. But I do this because when I go to that city city, it changes the whole dynamic of the entire trip. Like when I was growing up, I had 3 older brothers, so 6 people in a 2-bedroom hotel. So I would like be sleeping on the ground stuff. So like that was like really shitty and stuff. But now I can afford to have these crazy big Airbnbs. And so when I, when I come to that city, I feel at a higher standard. So I act at a higher standard. Therefore, I perform at a higher standard. And for someone who has— for someone on the outside who's never really done that before, it's hard to really explain what's going on in our heads because it's something you have to feel deep down inside of yourself. It can't really be explained. So when you explain to your financial advisor, he'll just call you stupid. But unless that financial advisor is making these indirect investments themselves, he would understand. So it's just a different way to attack life and a different way to live life. And when you do that, it just all circles back around and you growing and growing and growing like that.

And then like one more thing, like think about what is the value of an idea. The value of an idea could be millions of dollars. That's why like when I go to LA, I like to stay at the Montage. It's a hotel that has the nicest spa in LA. And the reason I want to do that is because I go to the spa and then I feel really good and I go in the relaxation room and I drink tea, no phones, disconnecting. And almost every time I do that, I I think of something that I could apply to my business that generates us a lot more income. So even though it costs $800 a night to stay there, I guarantee I'm gonna think of something that makes us more than, you know, $10,000 or even $50,000 from being in that mindset. And you have to put yourself in that mindset. You can't just like think yourself into it. So I like to put myself in an environment that gets me in the mindset to come up with an idea that makes us a lot more income than what it cost to be there.

Absolutely. And furthermore on this topic, and this isn't too something— this isn't something you guys should really like think about too much, but like the image you put off in what you're dealing with. Like, I know you're dealing with millionaires, I'm dealing with millionaires. When you roll up and you, and you're, and you seem like a millionaire yourself, you start to feel way more natural with these people, you know. You feel like you're one of them. But if you're trying to save save every single penny, that's gonna also— like, it won't— like, that's what Grant Cardone talks about too. Your money, it needs to be lucrative. If you're saving and penny-pinching every one, eventually you're just gonna be focused on saving the money instead of making the money, and that's where a lot of people go wrong. So for my final question, you have helped thousands of people make— how much money? Millions and millions of dollars. And you've touched so many people, you've inspired so many So a question a lot of these YouTube subscribers I know are curious to know is, how come you haven't started your own YouTube channel yet?

You know what, I would have to say that my social media skills are not the best. I, I like to be more behind the scenes and building things, but I realize that I can't always be like that. Most of my business has been ran on paid ads and it's been very profitable. So I haven't really thought to get into this yet, but it's a space I need to get into, and it's a plan that we just started putting together, a content strategy, and something I'm gonna stick to. You know, I always talk about discipline and being consistent with things, so it's actually something I'm about to start doing now. So guys, you should go subscribe to my channel because I'm gonna be putting out some cool stuff soon.

Absolutely, and you want to get on the ground foundation of this so you can say you're one of the first subscribers to the Jared Goetz YouTube. I highly, highly, strongly encourage all of you to subscribe to Jared Goetz right now because I guarantee it's going to be some incredible content. I was watching part of his video that he did recently where he just called a bunch of random people on Instagram, and that's such an original idea. That's what I'm all about, these original ideas. So I know he's in the same mindset as me, so if you like my videos, you'll love his videos.

Awesome, I appreciate that.

Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, Sounds good. Awesome, guys. Thank you. Peace.

What's up, guys? Hope you enjoyed the podcast. We really enjoy bringing value to you consistently. We're going to be doing a lot of these, so make sure to keep up to date with Jared on his socials, @jaredgoetz on Instagram. Go check him out. We'll be posting when these new podcasts are dropping. Stopping there. If you did get any value from this podcast, please do us a favor and share this with everybody that you think would receive just as much value from it. And we'll see you on the next one.