Jason Katzenback — The Story Behind Amazing.com

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf. Hey, yo, yo.

What's up?

I'm doing great. I'm doing.

Wasn't expecting to see you here.

No, no. How do I look today?

Good. You're wearing a Hustle and Flowchart.

Someday I'm gonna say that. Hustle and Flowchart T shirt. And you're wearing some light brown pants. I'm pretty sure you wear those every podcast day.

Actually, you know what are those your podcasting pants? Actually newer pants. But that's not how I look. You're describing how I look. But how. I mean, I guess. What's the feeling? Or what's the.

What's the essence?

Yeah. What's the essence of this? Glow. Amazing Dot com.

Oh, you were trying to set me up. I get it now. You look Amazing dot com.

He's usually way better.

All right, so today we're talking to Jason Katzenbach, one of the Co founders of Amazing.com. not Glow.com?

Not Good.com. amazing.com.

I did not understand what you were getting at. I didn't realize it was a setup for amazing.com.

Okay.

I thought you were asking me to describe your essence.

Well, now you know. It's amazing giving you the facts.

All right, so Jason, he's the co founder of Amazing.com, originally. Amazing. Selling machines. That is helped. What did he say? Like 30,000 people become entrepreneurs by selling stuff on Amazon.

It's a lot. And that's probably the number. I don't see the number in our handy dandy notes, but I would go with that.

Yeah. And he's also the co founder of.

Sellercon, which has about 3,000 plus people every year at this thing. And it's at the MGM Grand June.

21St and 23rd in Las Vegas.

Yeah. Which I don't know when this goes live, but hopefully it's before then.

I can make it go live before then.

Let's do that. Let's help them out. Sellercon. Go check it out. If you're in the E Comm world that is like, you know, he said something. I'm not going to butcher it, so I'm not going to say the percentage. But Jason said, you know, the folks who actually go there and implement have some crazy amount of success rate higher than not going there.

Yeah.

So if you're in the.

He mentions it on the call, so we'll let him say those numbers when we get into the interview. So he does mention that, but they've managed to build this amazing business. Matt Clark, his partner, and Jason have managed to build this amazing business. Quite punnelly the first.

First time you said that. Yeah, I don't think you noticed that.

You said I didn't notice.

I was watching. I was like, oh, I caught in the second. I caught it. All right. Yeah. So sorry.

Well, in the interview, I actually asked him how he got such an amazing domain.

That's true. That was one of your questions.

That was one of my questions.

That's true. So, yeah, we broke down the whole partnership thing because selfishly, of course, we're gonna ask like, hey, you got a partner and you guys are doing all right.

Yeah, I'm work. So we, Joe and I are sick of the black eyes from fighting so often. So we want to know how they handle it.

My hand hurts and the black eyes are all on mats. I mean. Yeah, it's sucks. I'm sorry, dude.

Yeah, he's abusive.

I'm the abusive one.

But he really described, like, how are.

Our intros just getting more and more off the wall, like every time we record intros.

Yeah. Okay, just let us know what you think about these intros.

We could probably shorten them.

Yeah, I'm sorry. So feel. Don't fast forward. But next time maybe.

Yeah, just listen to us rant for a few more minutes. We will get to this interview, I promise.

Eventually it'll come at you. All right, so he's all about, like, don't work in your business business, get into the leadership role business. Jesus Christ. So, yes, he breaks down this whole formula. And I thought it was actually really cool because I think it was. He said it was influenced a little bit by Todd Herman, who's actually going to be on the show soon. He referenced him in this way that you kind of quantify how you spend your time and the money that you're kind of leaving on the table. And it's a different approach that I've never heard. And then he has some ways to kind of get in the mindset of, hey, maybe you should stop running things in your business that are like $10 an hour work and do this instead.

Yeah, yeah, we talk about, yeah, we talk about how to scale your team up and how to, how to do that effectively and when to do that when the right time is how to know which people to hire next. We really dive into, like that team building element. And then at the end, I couldn't help but ask. I wanted to talk to him about Amazon.com and actually selling on Amazon So he gave us a few little tips and insights into the. What's going on in the world of Amazon right now and what it takes to be a successful seller on Amazon right now. And of course, I talked to him about his amazing domain and how he got it and a lot of. A lot of ground covered here. Really, really, really nice guy. And they have an awesome company that is really, really impacting a lot of people. You know, he's a philanthropist as well, so it's. It's impacting more than just the people he's touching directly with it.

You.

Which is always something that we love to hear from businesses as well.

Well, we're. Yeah, we're actively trying to do that in our own business. We haven't solidified things, but we want to figure out maybe it's like selling shirts and proceeds go to a foundation or a nonprofit, a cause of, you know, of our choosing each month or maybe of our, our listeners choosings, something like that. We're building.

We.

We. We've been throwing around some ideas, so just like, just know behind the scenes, we're like, okay, what's more motivating than just money or more listeners or, you know, lifestyle? It's like, I feel like we've done pretty well. Like, what bigger impact that we can do here. Yeah, I think, like, Jason's doing. We didn't even really get into it, unfortunately, but he's doing a lot. And then just, just everything they're doing is a big impact.

So, yep, it's.

It's what we're looking at over here.

And. All right, so we. We have Stephen on our team. Stephen is a badass. He runs the Hustle and Flow shorts podcast, and he takes notes on every single episode that we record so that you can have them. Yes. You the person, the.

This is why I was getting distracted talking to you. I was like, what does Matt say in these things? I'm like, he gets really fiery.

I do. I'm passionate. I love notes.

Maybe it's just I'm not that passionate about notes, but I appreciate the notes and the value they bring to the table because it saves me so much time that this awesome dude named Steven is taking the notes on my behalf. And you can actually get these notes for free.

Hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m P. That's where you download the companion for this episode, assuming you're listening to this episode while it's fresh. Because some of the companions go away, there is a time limit. You got to get them while the episode's fresh, but if you go to hustleandflowchart.com comp, we'll give you the notes to this episode for free. It's going to have all the tips, the tactics, the strategies, the stories behind the scenes, the resources, the tools, the all of it.

And don't worry, if you're a little late on this specific episode, there are going to be some other companions waiting for you for free.

Yeah. Hustleflowchart.com comp let's go talk to Jason because this is probably our world record for longest intro by now.

Hey, Jason, thanks for hopping on the show, dude.

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah. So we were introduced by our buddy, mutual buddy, Rob Burns. We just had him on the show. I think he's probably coming out his episodes probably one or two before this one.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Totally guessing, but it's kind of a cool. He was talking about you quite a bit on there. Amazing.com and sellercon, all that stuff. You guys are doing a lot.

Yeah, we are. It's, you know, it's busy lifestyle, but I'm enjoying it. You know, it's. You got to work hard if you want to succeed. It's not an easy road, but it's definitely rewarding when you're, you know, first of all, lining your own pocket. But when you're, you're doing the things that you want to be doing, it's a blessed spot I'm in. I'm not saying I don't have some sleepless nights.

So much going on, but I'll take it over a job any day.

That's the truth. And I know, I mean, not only. So you have what, amazing.com and all the different assets, the verticals within there and Stellarcon. So that's coming up in what, June 21st? Is that what it was?

Yeah, June 21st to the 23rd at the MGM grand in Vegas. Really excited about that. Got, you know, Dave Asprey of Bulletproof, Robert Kiyosaki, Sarah Blakely of Spanx, and, you know, just, yeah, got a lineup of. And our mutual friend Rob Burns, of course. But he's a headliner, right?

I love you, Rob, but no, you're not a headliner.

Gotta pay some money for that or something.

Yeah, that's.

I mean, we've heard a lot about it. Matt and I aren't specifically in the E. Com Amazon world, but a lot of our listeners I know are and are aware of it. And Rob was describing SellerCon. It's like, what, 3,000 plus people? And we're just like, holy moly.

You know, it's a pretty wild experience to have your own event. And it's very focused on the Amazon ecosystem. So anybody interested or selling on Amazon, you know, and got some really cool stats for that too. You know, the whole reason it came apart was when we originally started teaching people how we sold on Amazon. You know, there's that whole idea that the Internet is so singular, it's hard to engage with people and all that. And so we really wanted to create an event where we could bring sellers together. And so initially, we did it as more or less a free component of our primary training for the amazing selling machine. And then it just took on a life of its own. And we just did a recent survey, looked at all the results and everything. Our students that go to sellercon are 250% more likely to be earning 1 to $12 million a year in annualized revenue than those that don't. So it really does attract the, you know, the dedicated kind of people that really want to, you know, succeed. And it's just so powerful to be surrounded by those people. And it's so inspiring when we're there because you have so many people that are just killing it coming up and hugging us and saying how we've changed their lives. So it's just this addictive thing where I can't wait to do it again because it's just cool to see the impact you're having on people's lives.

Oh, that's awesome.

That's so cool. So let's actually go back backwards a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit how you actually got started in business, how you kind of became an entrepreneur and then sort of tell us the journey to where you are today?

Yeah, for sure. So I used to work for a company called Weyerhaeuser, which was a force manufacturing company. And, you know, as a teenager, I mean, even a young kid in college, I dropped out of college. I just. I could never connect the dots with education and a career. And I'm not saying education is wrong. In fact, I'll get to. It's the opposite. I think it's right, but it needs to be. Anyway, let me get into it. So I started working for this company called Weyerhaeuser. And I was, you know, I was working in equipment. And so I'm sitting there in this thing called a paint booth where it was a down day. And so this is a day where they do maintenance in the factory. And I'm 23 years old with a kid on the way. And I'm sitting in this thing with a foot of paint covering my feet. You know, I got big rubber boots on. I'm just bent over sitting, like, is this what I'm, you know, doing for the rest of my life? So at that moment, just, that was, that was the moment where I said, no, I'm not. And so I actually went into the lunchroom and I declared to all my fellow co workers I'd be their boss in five years. And at that time, I was a smart ass kid. They're all laughing at me. Well, three years later, I was their boss.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. You know, and it was just that moment in my mind. But I did, I knew I needed to do something else. But then the Internet at that time, so this was 96, 97. So the Internet was just kind of coming into its heyday. In fact, that was when the big.com boom was. But I didn't really get into it too much. I kind of knew there was something there. But it wasn't until 2003 when our CEO of Warehouser at that time abolished all bonuses. And so I'm sitting here grinding out every day, trying to do my best job and I'll send the CEO cancels bonuses. And at first that really sucked. But then you find out a couple months later in a newsletter you got a $7.5 million stock option bonus because of how we saved the company so much money. Yeah, it was just a slap in the face. And I realized at that time, you can only go so far working for someone else. And for me, it just wasn't worth it. I wanted to put in extra work, but I wanted it to line my own pockets. And I realized if I'm having to commute every day to come and be a slave for so that you could take away all my perks, like, why am I doing this? So that was when I really decided, you know, to change. And there was a gentleman, a guy called John Reese, I don't know if you ever heard of him, with Traffic Secrets.

You know, and he was the game changer for me. He really was. Like, after I went through that training and everything, I realized the Internet, I want to do this.

It was Traffic Secrets, right? That product?

Yeah, yeah, Traffic Secrets. You know, the first million dollar one day launch of a.

You know, so it was just so inspiring. And so three years later, I quit my job. So actually it was December 12, 2005. And in 2006, my business did over three and a half million. So yeah, really, it was a game changer.

That's cool.

Yeah. So then I just, I've always been an advocate. I've always taught what I've learned. So I took the route that, you know, how I ran my business, how I implemented things, that's what I teach people. And I was really focused on Google and SEO and Google Ads. And then in 2011, 2012, I met my business partner, Matt Clark at a group called the Mavericks. I don't know if you know Yannick Silver. Yannick Silver, that whole group there. Yep, yep, yep. And so I became a maverick, met Matt, and here's this young guy, 24 years old at the time, doing over $100,000 a month, selling his own brand of products on Amazon. And it was just like, wow, I didn't know you could do that. So over the next year he taught me. And when I launched my product, within the first, within four months of launching my product, I was doing over $200,000 a month with over 100,000 in profit. Now I have to thank. If I ever see him, I'll give him a big hug, Dr. Oz, because it was just timing wise, my first product was actually a raspberry ketone drop. Yeah. And so with that diet fad, he just, at the same time he started advertising it and it was like, yeah, having like one day where I made like just $15,000 one day. And it was like, I get to be a billionaire.

This can last forever.

It's going to last forever. You know, and then when you realize, like, well, first of all, I don't even believe in the product. And it just, you know, it really showed me that if you don't believe in what you're selling, if you don't feel ethical with what you're selling, like you're not going to be fulfilled. And so we, we turf that business. I folks. So I do still have my own brands on Amazon, but we.

The home market more than anything. The home market, yeah, that in a nutshell our story. But you know, what we did through that process though is originally I quit my job to start a business, work from home. And then as my business grew, you know, we, in 2014, we opened an office in Austin just paying a ridiculous amount of money, like $60,000 a month rent. But we just had this vision that if we build this thing, they would come and wow, did we ever.

It hurt us big time.

So curious why the $60,000 a month place build it? I mean, were you trying to bring More of a brick and mortar presence to this whole thing.

No, it was more following Google, Facebook, all of those kind of things. And it was really. I've talked about putting the cart before the horse. Like when you have a company like Google or Facebook that has billions of dollars in VC capital, venture capital, you know, it's. They can make, they can do things different. You know, we're. My business has always been 100% self funded. And so our idea was, you know, we have 101 ideas. Well, let's hire 101 people to implement those ideas. Yeah, but the thing that we forgot is someone has to manage those hundred people. And so all of a sudden we had people start inventing jobs for themselves. And you know, running a company is awesome, but managing people, oh my goodness, it can be really difficult. And so, you know, you got all these dynamics and people not getting along and it was just lots and lots of lessons. And the cool thing is we, you know, we've really changed a lot over the last few years and we've got to such a good internal process with our company that we've switched back to a 100% work from home environment for everybody. And we're doing better than ever. It's, it's been a pretty awesome journey.

That's awesome, man. Yeah. And I had to, I had to ask because I was like, wait, what is this?

Yeah, it was really, you know, I want to blame our over eagerness and you know, Google because, you know, you're reading these books about how they run their company and it's like, you know, and the whole idea of autonomy, you know, that was a big thing. Like, we'll give everyone this autonomy where they can come and go. It's all about results. Yeah, well, no, that needs to happen when you have solid managers in place with solid KPIs and metrics that they can make sure you're hitting all things. And you know, for us it was, we were, we were giving trust way too soon. You know, you really need to. It's kind of like with bowling, you want to have the bumpers up first, you know, like, because you don't want people going in the gutter all the time. And that's what's happening.

So that's a good analogy.

I remember there was like a phase of time where like the, you know, company culture was the big buzzword and everybody thought of company culture is like, cool, we need a pool table and a foosball table and we need a, an Xbox and some couches in the corner.

Exactly.

You know, you guys did that, right? You had a room in the corner.

We did. We had the big, funky love socks, beanbag chairs.

Yeah. And what we found, like, first of all, ping pong table. No one can work when people are going, seriously.

It was an expensive lesson. Huge lesson. But it was. They're the best lessons when you learn in real life.

I love it. I love it. Now, what's sort of the partnership dynamic like, between you and Matt? Because obviously, Joe and I here, we're business partners, and we don't always see eye to eye and get along every single day of our lives, but most days we're pretty good.

Most of the time we do.

I'm curious what the dynamic is. Like. Do you guys have pretty clearly defined roles where you stay out of each other's lanes?

It's like a perfect marriage. It's so wonderful.

I'm gonna call B.S.

You know, it is a marriage, and that's really what it comes down to is it's like you've got to weigh the. The benefits. You're two different people. You're gonna see, you know, two different generations. I'll be 47 this year, and Matt's 32, 33 now. You know, he was in his 20s when we were starting. We're just different people that have different goals. I have a family with young. With kids. Well, not young kids anymore, so even those dynamics. But.

Works really well. And one thing as much as we don't get along all the time, we've definitely had some lessons. We kind of try to focus on the intent behind what's going on. If we're going to argue, but if the intent is. If it comes out wrong, but you know, the person's intent is genuine, their goal is the benefit of the company, then it helps a lot, you know, and because trust has to happen, and that's something I'm very proud of, is, you know, I'm. I like to be very trustful and honest. And Matt and I, you know, we were making millions of dollars together before we even signed a one legal document.

Wow, that's awesome. I love to hear that right there, because most people just get so scared.

You know, I've had some bad goings. I've had some situations where we didn't sign contracts or I kind of just trusted the contract. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh.

Oh.

You just feel so embarrassed. It's like, you know, and that's the thing with running business, man. Due diligence. Like, at the end of the Day, like, stop with the excuses. It's nobody else's fault. You got to own it. Like, no matter what you do, like, if you're sitting there blaming your employees, blaming somebody else, it's like, well, who's managing them? Who's look like, you've got to be able to run your business. You've got to be able to lead your business. I mean, and you really want to be making sure you're the one. Like, don't rely on other people. And that was a big thing with hiring is we just assumed, oh, we'll hire people and they'll take care of that stuff. Well, they don't have your vision. They don't have your. We're all different people. And they come in with an employee mindset. It's just. It's very different. So even with me and Matt, like, Matt has a drive to be very, very wealthy. You know, he's got big, big goals. And for me, it's more about lifestyle. So that right there causes issues because he'll want to push something a lot harder than I will, and I'll be a little bit more complacent on things. But then that works opposite in others where I'm really concerned about nurturing and creating relationships with our customers. And he's more about driving the sales and the growth in the stockholders, shareholders, which is us. But the whole idea with that is, you know, no one's wrong, neither of us are wrong, and that's what we've got to look at. You know, it's like a marriage. Like, you're gonna sit there with whoever your spouse is, whoever your partner is, and you're not going to be the exact same. And in fact, if you are the exact same, you're going to be miss too much. You've got to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are and then how to work together. And so me and Matt have been together long enough now. We still do have our issues, and just like any marriage, you will, but we do kind of understand where our strengths and weaknesses are. So it helps a lot.

Yeah, that's really cool. And you reminded. We were chatting with Ryan Dice the other week, and he said, yeah, basically, if there's two partners and you're not clashing, but also kind of of making better of the situation after that, one of you are irrelevant. One of you has got to go.

Yeah. You look at a dynamic there with him and Perry Belcher. Like, talk about two different people. Totally.

Yes. That's really cool.

You hinted at some of these Topics that we were thinking about getting into, which is the whole leading the business rather than running your business.

I'm just trying to think, yeah, like, is there a. Do you think that's something people should lead with in, you know, when they're building their company from a beginning standpoint? Or is it like a point in time, a transition point that's pretty clearly defined where you should start thinking that way?

I mean, it has to be a transition point, in my opinion. So I've been blessed to have been able to teach over 30,000 people, teach, mentor, and, you know, 30,000 students through learning how to sell on Amazon alone. And when you're starting out, especially when you're on your own, you have to do everything. You have to do customer support, you have to do marketing, you have to do research, you have to do everything yourself. But there gets to a point where people don't get out of that, where they kind of get into this paradigm where they're running the business, they're working the business, but they're never able to step back and actually lead and grow their business. And oftentimes what happens with that. And so the analogy I use is, when I went to college, I dropped out because I hated it. It was like, why do I need to learn this stuff? Well, then later on in life, I remember my, you know, someone comes up to me at work and say, we're trying to figure out how to build this shelter. What do you do? And I'm like, hey, that's Pythagorean theorem. I'm like, oh, my goodness, that was useful. It stuck. And then all of a sudden, when I started getting older, I decided, I'm going to go back to school. When I went back to school, I got a 4.0, because all of a sudden, now I'm connecting the dots. And so when someone's learning a business, you know, and you're talking about branding and you're talking about all these things, all they care about right now is starting the business. Like, you know, just finding a product to sell, like learning the ecosystem of, you know, whatever they're selling on, whether it be Amazon in their own store or whatever, there's so many things to learn. They can't lead their business. They're a student of what they're doing. But then once they're up and established, they really need to draw a line in the sand as to what their role in the company is. Because if you're just going to continue doing customer support, the analogy I have on this and a Good. Todd Herman, I don't know if you know who he is, is a great. He was a coach of mine actually a few years ago and he just released an awesome book. One of the things he showed me was really understanding how to segment your time. And you put it in blocks of $10 an hour task, $100 an hour tasks, thousand dollar an hour tasks, and $10,000 an hour tasks. And if your goal is to have just say a million dollar business, well, that means you have to be generating about 3,500 bucks a day. Now, the most effective way to lead your company is to look at it like, as the leader in this company, my time has to be worth an equal amount to the amount of money I think I should be earning. So if I should be earning $3,500 a day, what kind of tasks should I be working on? Is working on this image for two hours that I could pay someone 10 bucks an hour, is that going to help me get to a million dollars a year? No, no. What that's going to do is that's going to help you keep a $10 an hour job because you're never going to have time to really do those things that's going to grow your business. So what you want to start doing is after, you know, because initially you have to do that unless you have capital or resources or anything like that. But you're trying to be as smart as you can with, you have, so you do those things. But what I recommend people is once you kind of start getting into that flow where you're getting sales, things are starting to happen. You really want to start journaling and figuring out. And when I say journaling, I'm not talking about journaling from the standpoint of writing out everything, just bullet points. Just figure out what is it. The things I worked on today. And then what you want to do at the end of that day is go through that list and figure out which one are the $10 an hour tasks, $100 an hour tasks, zero hour tasks. Like if you find, hey, I was on Facebook for the last hour and a half, then you go through that list. And I take highlighters and so I'll have a red highlighter that I'll stroke all the things that are complete waste of time so that, you know, like, oh my goodness, I spent three hours today doing things that did nothing for my business. Those are the things that you just got to start eliminating. Then I take my yellow highlighter and I start first knocking off the things that are the $10 an hour tasks. And what I do is I might have to keep doing them at first, but then you start building yourself a job description where look, I'm spending say 10 hours a week doing these tasks, I need to hire someone that'll do these tasks for me. So now you know, okay, these are the tasks that I seem to be routinely doing every week. So now I'm able to figure out, okay, my first hire here is to hire someone to take these off my plate so I can start fitting in more hundred dollar an hour tasks. Does that make sense how I'm explaining that?

Yeah. So you're basically starting with those lower value tasks and pretty much clearing your plate as best you can right from the beginning. I love how you journal with the colors and everything too. It sounds like pen and paper for everything.

Yeah. And you don't do it every single day. What you'll do is when you feel like you're kind of at that point where you, you're spinning your wheels, you're not really getting results. Recommend doing that for two to three weeks.

Okay.

For two to three weeks you're going to have tons of data where now it's like, okay, now I got this position. So whether it be that you can, if you've already hired someone, you can now add more. Get them to a point where they're maybe full time with you, but you can grow it that way. And it's really, that's how you start leading your company when you're able to start getting out of those tasks. Because really like the, the more mature your company goes.

I can't remember what the name of the diagram is right now, but essentially it's like a pyramid and you look at the bottom and at the bottom you have the one day tasks. Meaning like that's more like the customer support stuff where you know, every day you're doing things that are affecting the company today. And then you got the weekly, then you got the monthly, then you got the yearly. You really should be focusing on the yearly tasks. The things that are going to like grow your business, like focusing on what are the new products we're going to do, what are the new platforms we're going to do, what are the new, who are new partners that we're going to be able to work with. Those are the, and you know, what are the internal inefficiencies of our company? Like those are the things that are the thousand, $10,000 an hour tasks that will really help you lead your company to a difference.

And for some reason People are just afraid. And, and at the end of the day, it's because it costs money you have to pay for, you know, to hire people. But you've really got to ask yourself, like, what's your time worth? Like, do you, do you really think you're only worth $10 an hour? You know, and so that's really where you've got to understand, like, if you want to have a million dollar a year business, you can't focus on those types of tasks.

Yeah.

Now do you feel there's like a specific tipping point? Like, you know, maybe like a financial milestone or just how many hours you work per day milestone? Is there like some tipping point where you go, okay, this is out of hand, I need to start hiring people.

So there's no, I haven't found a formula yet. But it's interesting because remember, God, about four years ago at the event, I had a gentleman come out and ask me that exact same question. I'm like, well, where are you with your business right now? It was, well, we're doing about $250,000 a month. And I'm like just looking at him as my jaw drops with this blank stare. It's like, and you're still working a job. But he's terrified to quit his job because of that perceived safe, you know, like it's more secure. And it's like, well, it's not yet. You know, I, the company where I was in that paint booth, I remember everyone saying, oh, I'm going to be able to retire here. Ten years later, they shut down. That mill is complete, completely, like closed now. And so there, there is no such thing as job security. So first of all, you know, it's got, it's gotta be focused on like, where what are your goals? Like, you've gotta look at it like, what's your one year goal? And you've gotta be realistic. Like if your one year goal is to get to a million dollars and you're finding right now, like six months into it, you're still doing those $10 an hour tasks, you've gotta be realistic. And that's why working in 90 day segments is so powerful. Like, what I recommend is like right now, if you're just starting this first 90 days, you just got to learn the business, you got to learn the, like, I'm just going to use selling on Amazon as an example because it's just easiest for me to reference right now. So in your first 90 days, your goal is to pick a product, create a brand, get it up on Amazon and start getting some sales. Because in those first 90 days, you know, you're, it's. No matter what the platform is, whether you're using a new email platform, whatever, everything's different. So you're gonna have to learn that stuff. So then once you're up and selling after those 90 days, you look, okay, what's the next thing I can do? Well, that's what I recommend is after the next 90 days you want to start looking at, okay, now how can I start.

Really taking advantage of my time, maximizing my efficiency and looking at my time? You're gonna have two options there. So if you're working a full time job, recommend everyone work for the first year. Don't quit your job and you know, just hope that this company is going to make it because then you're going to be making poor decisions. If you're creating a business right away to live off the income, then you're not going to have money to reinvest in the company. So you want to be smart about that too. But really look at your, you know, let the money talk to you. Like, if you, if you have the ability to not take money from the company to live off what you've already been generating, then I recommend you start hiring, you know, within about, you know, definitely within the six months of getting up and running. Because then, you know, you're looking at your resources, you're looking at your finances, and it's like, okay, I'm making, let's say you're only doing $1,000 a month profit right now, but you're sitting there focused on all these $10 an hour tasks. Well, then you look at it and say, well, how much can I afford? Well, you can hire someone overseas for $500 a month easily. That could do 10 hours a week, you know, and you start with, that's why you really want to start with those tasks. Big, big, big point here though. Don't hire someone to do something you don't know how to do, especially when you're started. You know, I see people make mistakes like, oh, I'm gonna hire someone to manage my paid ads. And it's like, okay, you'll be out of business. Because it's like if you don't know how to do those things and you're hiring someone to do that and spend your money for you, you, they're going to spend your money.

Sure.

It's not their money. So you really want to make sure. Like that's another important thing. And obviously you can't do Everything. But you should at least understand how the system works and be able to create some goals. You know, don't never hire before you understand first of all what the role is, but also what your goal is. And a huge tip that I think people miss out on is plan for failure. Not, I'm not sitting there saying this is going to fail, but when you hire someone, say, okay, in the next 90 days and then in the next six months, first of all, what is it that I want this person to accomplish? What does success look? So if I hire this person, that means in 90 days from now, I am free of those 10 hour week tasks and this person is doing them well. Well then you want to think, okay, well now in the next 30, 60, 90 days, what does failure look like? One of the first things is failure looks like to me if suddenly people don't show up for work, you know, you want to hire a slow fire fast. And if in those first few months, like, and that's one of the, the scary things about hiring over to especially the Philippine, they're wonderful, but they're very sensitive.

Right.

And so if you are harsh with them suddenly, like they're scared, they want respect. Like they, they respect you, they want to be treated that well that way. And so you can't talk to them like, you can't say that was a horrible job what you did there because what they'll do suddenly, you know, their fifth mother will have died and they won't be at work that day because, you know, it's amazing how many of them have multiple parents that die all the time. I say that in jest, but it's true. Like, wasn't your mother gravely ill last week? You know, so you just gotta, you know, treat them with respect, but really know your metrics, know what you're hiring for and then know what failure looks like. So you're not sitting here trying to save something that's not working. If this employee is not achieving the results, if you have red flags, if you're having to manage this person more than get results, you got to let them go.

Yeah.

Then once you hire that person, don't try to hire too much. That's why I recommend starting with about 10 hours a week max. Because you're going to have to train that person. And so it's going to actually be taking you more of your time the first few weeks because you've got to train them. That's why I love things like Camtasia and that because it's great to do screen Recordings to train people. But once you train them, you get them up and then you can start adding more and more and more. But it's really about the secret is really just in my opinion, working in 90 day increments and really being clear on what the metrics are you're looking for, what success looks like, what failure looks like and what the plan is when either of those things happen. So what are you going to do if failure happens and how you're going to handle it? Because a lot of times you just get so much into the running of your company again that you're just like, and I made this mistake so many times just going to hire someone. We'll figure it out as we go. Well, first of all, that's going to cost you three times as much money and you're going to have an unmotivated, unhappy employee because people don't want to sit there doing nothing. As much as the idea of getting paid to do nothing might sound great, our human psyche doesn't like, we don't want to be a useless bump on a log. We want to have value. And that's really what employees want. They want to be appreciated and know that they're contributing and being part of something. So if you're not doing that right off the bat, you're just, you're asking for failure.

Going back to what Matt was asking about, when do you start? I like that you said start early. Within the next, let's call it 90 days or so. Assuming that the business is starting to make some money, about 1,000 bucks. Like you were saying.

Tell me if you agree or not. But it's almost like training the business owner to start to hand off some tasks. Obviously they should understand what, what they're leading, the tasks they're handing off for that $10 an hour per job, let's say 100%. But it's like, it's because I just know from our experience is it's tough to let go of something you feel like you're the best of in the world. And Matt and I both have our own things that we're just like, oh, but that's good for us. We're great at that. Or we enjoy it. It could even be an enjoyment factor. But so what would you say if like someone's really struggling with that? Maybe they're further than that. Beginning stages, they're more like seasoned. Are there some tactics that you would recommend to kind of slowly release the grip of whatever the task is?

So I really liked doing graphic works back in the day. And you know, and sometimes, because there's just fun, you see these little things at the end of the day. First of all, you know, it comes down to results too, like me doing this versus somebody else. Is anyone going to notice that the image is that much different? You know, and if someone can do the job 80% as well as you, and you're able to now focus on something else more important, the results are always better. They just always are. But one of the things that I do with my planning that really helps. So in 90 days, like I'll have, at the end of a 90 day period, I'll say I've created a documented plan for how I'm going to do this. So for example, if I'm sitting there, you know, if I really like doing images, you know, I'll sit there. Okay, so what the next 90 day plan, I know I need to hire someone. So I'm going to create a documented plan so that at the end of these 90 days, I have a plan that if I am in the financial situation of my company to be able to afford to do this. I now have my plan ahead of time. Time. The cool thing is when you get to those 90 days, if you're not at that situation now, you have the framework that it's like, okay, so we're not at the point. So where do now it's like, okay, I have the framework of what the company has to be doing. I know where we need to be at to be able to do this. So in the next 90 days, my goal right now is how do I achieve those results so that I can get there? So then when it comes to those tasks, you know, at the end, you know, I wish I had a magic answer. I mean, at the end of it, it's like, are you leading your company or are you like, are you creating a job? Is this a hobby? You know, like, it really comes down to understand, like, what, what are you wanting out of this? Because there are people, there are students of ours, they don't want to be millionaires. They just like the idea. They love their lifestyle. They just want to earn a little bit of extra money. They just like playing around. It's a hobby for them. Well, then that's a completely different mindset. Like if you're sitting there stressed that, like you do too much in the business, but you're looking at it as a hobby, it's like, well, well, that's what it is. It's a hobby. Like, you're not going to hire people for that. But if you truly want to quit your job, if you truly want to gain financial freedom, if you truly want to gain lifestyle freedom, and you're not getting there, then, you know, what's that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. You just got to be real with yourself. It's like, okay, well, what I'm doing isn't working. So obviously me doing images isn't working. I have to hire someone. And then, you know, that's really the only answer I have for that. I mean, just really looking in the mirror and saying, you know, what do you want?

It's getting real with yourself. I think you nailed it. That is kind of the magic answer, is there's a purpose for why you're even in business in the first place. Yeah, it's getting real with yourself. And be like, dude, what the hell am I doing with my time every day? Do I want to scale, or is it this? Yeah.

I mean, quite honestly. I mean, Joe and I have been business partners together for 12 years now.

Something like that. Yeah.

So about 12 years we've been business partners, and we still both have tasks in our business that we have sort of haven't released our own death grips on that we're just like, no, this is mine. I want to keep doing this. And that's. That's something that just now we're slowly starting to overcome. We actually hired an operations manager, and she's flat out telling us, no, you can't do that anymore.

That's actually a good answer right there. Really? And, I mean, obviously you can't afford that, but it's having good management in your company. Yes, because people that really understand the metrics and are looking at stuff and can have that outside perspective. Because sometimes you get arrogant in yourself. For example, like writing copy. I feel like I'm pretty good at it. And so then I've tested some other people. They've done crappy jobs. I thought, so then I just write off, said, oh, no, it's just easier if I do this. Well, it's not, you know, because it. I'm not one of those people. So that's where me and Matt are totally different. Matt, his mind is, like, just crazy how he can do that. He can sit down in one hour, whip something out that would take me a whole day. We're just different that way. But either him or me doing it, it's like, well, what else could we be doing that would bring our company more money? And even though we like doing it, it's like, is it the best thing? But then the argument on that, too, which you could have, like, you do want to enjoy what you're doing, too. So if you really like doing that, if that's your little guilty pleasure in the company, you don't sit there, you don't have to do everything. But again, it goes back to that. Well, then be real. If you're going to keep doing that, then it's going to slow down your progress to achieve your results. So it's just a matter of kind of looking at and trying to stay balanced.

Yeah, I think that's what it's all about. Yeah.

I feel like I hear more stories about people that waited too long to hire than I hear about people who claim they hired too early.

Yeah, yeah, It's. It's. And I think it's because people, you know, they also. They don't know what to hire for, you know, and so that's where that journaling thing really comes into play. Because when you start really realizing how you're spending your time, that can be a big slide slap in the face for you to realize. It's like, my goodness, you figure 10 hours a week that you're wasting how much you could be accomplishing if you're focused on the right things.

Yeah. And I love that. I think it's a good slap in the face for someone who needs this kind of motivation, is the way you said it. And it's like, I want to make a million dollars. Well, I got to make $3,500.

A week. Or, sorry, a day.

No, that's a day.

Yeah. Per day. And that there alone, I think, is enough to be like, ah, crap, all right, I'm not gonna hit my goal. And then, you know, as the year gets a little longer, that number goes up if you're not hitting your goal.

So it's also, you know, the one thing that I think people need to understand when they're running a business, too, is.

You'Re 100% responsible for everything. And so you like, running a business is not for everyone.

You know, we. I've tried helping some family members, some friends, and at the end of the day, some people just prefer to work for someone else because they want to have that freedom of not stressing all weekend about stuff and, you know, not. Not worrying about making decisions that will bankrupt a company, you know, because at the end of the day, when you own a company, like, yeah, you can make those bad decisions, so you've got a lot more pressure on you. So it's also being real with that. Like, if you don't want those responsibilities, if you don't, you don't like those responsibilities and you'd rather be doing graphics. Well, maybe you're just not meant to run a business. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, God, I love that there's people that don't want to run a business but love working for me because they're stellar and we pay them really well for that. And they're happier because they're happy that they, you know, when their weekend comes, they can have their weekend. So, you know, being real with that is important too.

Cool. Yeah. Now we're talking about leading a business. What are some key. I know you mentioned KPIs. I think it was like super early in the conversation, but what are some key leadership qualities? So assuming now someone has a team member, let's just call it one. What are some key things that people should know about leading a business rather than just stuck in the running of it?

Learn to hire.

Learn to hire. And hiring is. You've got to really have a defined job description. You really want to make sure you're not, you know, it's so easy to sit there and like, interview someone, say, because in an interview, I, when, when I first started applying for jobs, I went to a psych, a psychiatrist to learn how to do good interviews. You know, who's better than someone that understands the mind? And they, you know, little tricks they told me is mimic the interviewer. So if the interviewer is sitting up at the desk with their elbows on the desk, sit up at the desk with your elbows at the desk. If they're sitting back, relax, sit back, relax. Make it feel like you're. You're in line with them. Always have answers, you know, so they gave you all these tips. And so what I realized is, first of all, I was like, anyone could be a good interviewer. You know, at the end of the day, like an interview. The stat I read recently something like 3% of job interviews relate to job performance.

Wow.

You know, so it. So first of all, to understand that when you're hiring someone in the interview process, interview a lot of people, you know, using upwork or free up or, or any of those kind of services out online where you can hire people. It's so easy to just sit there and like the first person that looks kind of good, say, you're hired, ask them any questions. Did you check their references? Did you give them an example, task to do? Oh, no. And it's like, okay, well, if you're going to hire bad, trust me, your company is going to be like, your employees will eventually become one of your biggest expenses in your company. Yeah, and it sounds bad saying an expense, but it is. So you want that expense to become an investment that actually returns back. So start with the hiring, and that starts right with the job description. Then having a really good interview process, Then making sure you've got, like, you set that person up for success, and you set the company up for success and really learn how to manage people properly, too. You don't want to micromanage, but you have to at first. You have to, like, be watching them and making sure they understand. You know, you don't want to sit there and just say, I trust you do this. And then in a week when they do it, say, what did you do? This is horrible. You know, that's like, you've just squashed everything right there. So it's better to be kind of like nudging them along the way. And the more trust they build, the more you can start stepping back. So hiring is definitely a really big thing that, you know for leading a company. Getting good at math. You know math, and I'm talking basic math. Know your profit, know your expenses, know all of those things. It's way too easy to just sit there, say, oh, good, if I sell this product, I can be making a hundred thousand dollars a month. Hang on a second. You know, so when you're making this money. So first of all, you know, you've got like, shipping, you've got taxes, you've got all of those little things in there, and then you're looking at profit. Well, if you've hired anybody, well, you've got to consider what you're just your operational, your general expenses and all of that are so just really getting good at your math. Because if you know your math well, then you know where to focus. So it's. It's great to say, oh, you know, my KPI this year is to make a million dollars. Well, what does that mean? That's not a KPI.

That's not a KPI.

Yeah, like you can make a million dollars and like, also spend, you know, $1.1 million to your 100,000 in the hole. You know, like, that's not what a KPI is. It's. And focusing on, on gross profit, like, on the profit side, revenue is great, but really focusing on, you know, what is my profit factor? That's really huge. And, you know, one. Another really big thing is just, is Networking, like when you're leading the company, like, networking means lots of different things, like going to events, which is absolutely huge. I remember, you know, whether it was traffic and conversion or seller con or any of those kind of. I used to struggle with those because I always thought, oh, all they are is networking. They're gonna try to sell me stuff. But when you, all of a sudden, especially when you're running a business out of your home, when you're sitting there on this island by yourself and you know, you might not have family around you that's supporting you and you know, you might find some challenges and you're sitting there like, oh, this is really hard. But when you start networking with other people that are like minded, focused on the same goals and you start building your relationships with those people, it just, first of all, they give you insights into things. Oh, you know, it's amazing how many times when you talk to someone, oh my goodness, yeah, I was there. Don't stress about it. This is what I did. And you know, they can help you, lift you up. But also when you can give people inspiration, it really invigorates you. It's like, oh my goodness. Yeah, I do know my stuff. I'm starting to learn this stuff because one of the biggest challenges with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners is feeling not worthy. My fluke, am I not good enough? My, you know, it's so easy to start having those conversations. So when you're, when you're with other people in the industry, it just helps really get you like in line and understanding, being realistic and having that support group around you. I would say those are, you know, three solid examples of what leading is versus what not leading is.

Yeah, I like cool.

Now I want to be, I want to be super conscious of your time. And I have two kind of maybe small rabbit holes I want to go down with you before we ran out of time here. So one of them is I want to touch on Amazon just real quick. Do you feel that Amazon today becoming a seller on Amazon is as effective as it was back when you started amazing selling machines? Do you think the opportunity is the same and how has that shifted? If it, if it is different, it's.

It'S better and it's worse. So the better part is that. So Amazon is growing like crazy. You know, when I started it was $60 billion. Now a year. Now they're over 300 billion. Amazon's market share has grown. They say that 50% of e commerce transactions in the United States happen on Amazon now. You have all these stores closing and you have E commerce just in general growing. So you've got E commerce growing, you've got Amazon growing. More and more people are looking on Amazon. So the growth factor, the fact of saying, like, there's too many sellers on Amazon, that's crap. That's not true whatsoever. But what is true is there are more things in play now. Like before with Amazon, it was easier to get your product ranked. There was hacks you could do. It's kind of like the early day with pay per click or the early day with, with Google, you know, like, you know, back in the day with SEO, you know, you just keyword stuff your web page, you know, and you could rank well. Google, I mean, Amazon was kind of like that too. Their algorithm for ranking was a lot more immature and there was just. And it was easier for other. For, you know, one of the challenges that made it harder back then, it was easier for people to put fake reviews on your listings for competitors to come in and do what we call hijacking where, you know, they were, would just create a knockoff version of your product and start selling it on your listing. Well, Amazon's put a lot of checks and balances in place to prevent that. So becoming an established brand and really leveraging Amazon effectively is a lot easier. But the problem now is Amazon's kind of moving to a much more aggressive paid model where, you know, before there was very. When I first started selling on Amazon, there was no sponsored advertising ads. And now sponsored ads are a huge component. And if you don't learn how to do sponsored ads, it's going to be really hard to compete on Amazon. Before with Amazon, we would tell people, oh yeah, at least 20% profit margin, you're good, really, because of sponsored ads. You want to focus on products that are 30% profit margin. And the other thing is too, the metrics are always changing. So before when we would tell people look for products that are in the top 100 or top 1000, BSR. Well, now we tell people to look in the top 6,000 because what was happening before a product that was saved? So BSR is called bestseller rank on Amazon. So it's just this really generic kind of. It's not something you want to invest too much time in your research on, but it's a good idea. And what it is, it's just telling you which products are the best sellers on Amazon. And so before, a product that was, say 100 ranked bestseller. Well, now someone, because there's so many more people On Amazon, a product that's a thousand bestseller is getting the same amount of traffic, is what a hundred was a few years ago. So it's really making sure you're adapting. Like, if you're, you know, that's why, like, if anyone ever said, oh, I learned Amazon, you know, I'm gonna learn Amazon by reading a book, it's like, well, you're not gonna succeed because every six months, Amazon is changing so much that you just can't keep up that way, you know? And that's one of the reasons why, with our training, we've created communities with lots of people in it, and our mentors are all established sellers. Because you can't do this alone. Like, you need to be working with other people to be able to keep you up to date on everything. And another big area that Amazon's changed a lot is you. Before, you could kind of put a mediocre product on there, and you can't. You have to have a good product with a good product profit margin. The nice thing is there's lots of room, lots of products you can start with. But, you know, if you're sitting there wanting to just kind of like, oh, I'm just going to pick this product. I'm not even going to look at the product. I'm just going to put it up on Amazon. That's a huge risk. Like, you really want to know, like, feel and touch your product, look at it and make sure, like, if I was to buy this product, how could I make it better? And you want to kind of figure out how you can make your, you know, a better mousetrap kind of thing than the competitors. And there's two kind of different mindsets when you're starting on Amazon, too. So when you're selling on Amazon, there's the getting started. So when we tell people to start on Amazon, you want to start with products that have the littlest risk possible. That means you can get a minimum order quantity that's low. You can start with a low investment. And you want to start with products that are proven sellers, simple products that don't have. You won't have a lot of customer support. And you're confident that, you know, like a silicone spatula. I know that this is gonna solve the person's problem that they're looking for. But when you start growing your business, you've gotta get out of those products because those are the ones that competitors like. New sellers are always trying to start with that somebody in China can. Like, if someone's living in China, right next to a spatula factory. They can get them a lot cheaper than you can. So once you get on Amazon, start learning getting your products selling, that's where you wanna start getting into the more complex products, the products that cost a little bit more, that are gonna take a little bit, bit more input to be able to design, you know, and just get more complicated. So before you didn't really have to do that, you could be successful just selling your spatulas, but it doesn't really work that way anymore. Does that make sense?

Totally.

Yeah. It's start off small, kind of get the training wheels. Going back to the bowling analogy really if you think about it, and then working your way up from there.

Yep. It's like building a house. You know, if you're going to get into building a house, you're not going to start building a multi apartment complex. You build a shed, you know, and then you might build something a little bit bigger and you kind of learn, you start learning all the tips and tricks and then confident, you know, you grow with it because you're, you know, when you're starting out, you're learning everything. You're learning. You don't understand terminology, you don't understand how Amazon works like you want to right away when you're starting to come like customer support, focus on making your customers happy. That'll go so far because it'll make Amazon happy, it'll make your customers happy, it'll prevent bad reviews and all those good things. So you said two rabbit holes. I know. We only got a few minutes left.

The last one I think will be a very, very quick one. I'm curious if there's, if there's any story behind the domain amazing.com like was there any story for how you got. Because it's such an amazing. Well, no pun intended, I guess an amazing domain.

So we originally called our. So the product that we had originally was Amazing selling Machine and then we created the Amazing Academy. And as our company was just exploding, we looked at what can we do from a branding standpoint. So we came across the domain amazing.com and I'm not going to share how much everything costs. Originally they were wanting way more money than we originally. Then we were willing to spend. So. So here's a tip for anyone that's looking at buying a domain. Never pay the asking price.

That's a good tip.

Got into a really strong negotiation with them and we ended up paying 1/5 what they were originally asking. And the whole idea was just from a brand ability Standpoint, how can we make something that can just stand out and have a word that's really exciting and already kind of being leveraged from the word Amazing Sound Machine and just, just, you know, let you know, it's kind of a to go full 360 here. Close the loop. John Reese actually worked with us when we launched Amazing Sound Machine. That was a huge honor of mine to be able to work with him. It was his idea to come up with that name. Like he was interesting.

He was a domainer back in the day. That was a big part.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And he really like that guy. You know, he really doesn't. You don't hear of him much anymore. He keeps himself a lot. But he was the mind behind a lot of huge launches, a lot of successful businesses. What he taught me early on was just that whole idea of branding and making things easy for people to remember, focusing on benefits and coming up with names for things. So if you have this formula, don't say, this is the formula for how you rank your product on Amazon. You want to give it a name like the Cats and back ranking method or something. Something that makes it sound exciting so that people are like, ooh, what is this stuff? Like that, that really, really were powerful.

Yeah, no, we do the same thing. It's like terminology. We like the little acronyms. We try to make little acronyms with almost every strategy or method we use. And yeah, it's really cool when you start hearing your customers or listeners on the podcast reference that you're like, that's funny. That was just an idea. And I just randomly threw it on the whiteboard.

I, I claim I did it. So, you know, promoting your promotions, that was a big thing back in my SEO days where it's like everyone was creating content and then just leaving the content out there, never doing anything. So I coined the thing promoting your promotions. And people are like, no, you never coined that. And I'm like, well, I think I did.

Stop me. That's awesome, Jason. And really quick, just to wrap it up. So where's the best place folks can go check you out and kind of dig in all of what you're to going got? Obviously we mentioned amazing.com but you have a lot going on.

Yeah. So really right now, I guess, you know, amazing.com but sellercon, you know, I mean, if you're, if you're interested in selling on Amazon or if you sell on Amazon, check out sellercon.com check out sellercon.com tactics. See all the instructor, the trainers, Ezra fire. I mean, Ryan Moran, like, just lots of strategy people, big name people, all focused on, really, tactics. You'll hear from me. You know, obviously, I'll be speaking there. You can learn about me there. Yeah, I would say that's probably the second best place to amazing.com.

Perfect, man. Well, yeah, go check it out. We'll link everything in the show notes like we always do. Yeah. Appreciate your time, man.

And we close the interview. This was good. It was fun. And, yeah, hopefully people get value out of it.

I'm pretty sure they will. All right, man. Have a great one.

You too. Take care, guys.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki wiki.

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