#216 From $0 to $50K: How He Built a Profitable E-Commerce Business with Voltage

I was at a point where I was like, I need to level up as a business owner. 'Cause owning a business and managing a business are 2 very different things. And so I just looked at it as an opportunity to invest in me as a business owner. And that's what it was for me at that point with the Voltage Partnership. It's like, I can either choose to trust this community that I've built trust with, or I gotta get out because all business and all relationships are built on trust and alignment. And that was an easy answer for me.

It's like, Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first or next million.

All right folks, welcome back. I have Jared with me here, and guys, full disclaimer, as I have said recently on a couple of other ones, I'm honored to have another Voltage person here, partner, business person, and business builder in our community who Jared is gonna talk a little bit about his experience, what he's done, where he's going. As always, results are not necessarily typical for individuals or those who go it alone or even get involved in a training course or program or a one-on-one mentorship or coaching like Jared was involved with us. So all disclaimers aside, not everybody gets the same opportunity or has the same opportunity in business. So all business is a risk. Go and read all disclaimers of anything that we talk about revenue generation, profit, or opportunity. This is not necessarily the usual case, so you need to always take your own look and due diligence at any business. That said, I've invited him here today out of his own good kind will to talk about his experience because I think it's important. As we featured other members here recently, Ashley Kay, David Carters is coming out here shortly, uh, other members who have kind of gone through the last year, not just a few months of business building exercise, opportunity, and growth. Now it's fair to feature their story so you can hear the truth. What I don't want us to do is come across as any hopium guru lottery mindset scratch and sniff winner. That you think because I just went and scratched something, I'm gonna win a billion dollars.

Good luck.

Go play the lottery. You might have a chance at winning that, um, after the government takes its chunk. But you know, there's better ways, longer-term ways to invest risk and money and capital intellectually and with the right people, um, through the right investment, through the right scope. If e-commerce is something you have seriously considered doing and maybe wanna do it in the coming year, then you're gonna understand a little bit more after today's call as to whether or not that makes sense for you to do. If it's time, energy, attention, and money, those are the things you're going to want to pay attention to today. All right. All that aside, Jared, welcome to the call.

Man, Neil, thanks for having me. Yeah, I always enjoy dialoguing about everything, but especially things that I'm involved in and that are important to my world of influence. So thanks for having me.

Well, it's an honor to have you here and I'm excited to let you tell your story. So I'm just going to start the top end of this with a very open-ended question. How did you get here? What are you doing and where are you going?

Yeah.

Yeah. So 3 different questions all in one. So the how did I get here was I went to an Inner Circle Live through Wealth Without Wall Street and Russ and Joey back in, I think it was either late 2022 or early 2023. And I think you were there, Neil. You were one of the hosts on stage and you're involved in that world. And to be completely honest, I tuned you out because e-commerce was not even on the radar.

I had not. That's brutally honest. I appreciate you telling everybody that.

Totally tuned me out. I did. I did. Mainly because I'm a, I'm an analog being in a digital world. Sure. It was like there was no dendrite connection to have.

Gotcha. So, a foreign language.

Yes. In more ways than one. I was, I was there actually for 2 reasons. One was kind of to debunk the IBC, the Infinite Banking Concept, kind of the advisors I had around me at the time were pushing hard about why that didn't work. And so I was, I always, my mode of operandum is to go straight to the horse's mouth. I'm going to go and kind of encounter in dialogue, kind of like, you know, this platform. It's like, I want to get in a dialogue because I want to understand mainly. So really, really, that's my why. And that opened the path to That was just the first connection point with you individually. And then the other why we're here on this podcast today is actually, as all things in my life, relational relationships are top, you know, because of my belief system and my core values. Like the relationship is really all that matters. And my brother-in-law had quit Waffle House about 2 and a half years ago and was looking at e-commerce because somebody offered him $10,000 for a 10-year-old Seller Central account. And I was like, because I'd been in the Wealth Without Wall Street world and kind of the investment world, I'm like, hit the pause button, Tyler. Let's, let's investigate this. Why would somebody offer you that kind of money for an account that hasn't been active for 10 years? And so I went in my Rolodex, which again shows my analog Literal Rolodex, not like a real contact list. No, no, no. My mental Rolodex. I, I still think you're a good—

Oh, the mental Rolodex. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. So in my mental Rolodex, I'm like, hey, I think I've heard something about that. And I had been in the Wealth Without Wall Street community for, since that inner circle. And so kind of looked you up and did my due diligence on my side and said, man, Tyler, I think this is the way to go. He ended up choosing not to and I had done a number of kind of courses of just educating and leveling myself up cuz I had bought the business I had been managing since '09 in 2020. And I was at a point where I was like, I need to level up as a, as a business owner. Cuz owning a business and managing a business are 2 very different things. And so I just looked at it as an opportunity to invest in me as a business owner, irregardless of what Tyler ended up doing. And so that's kind of the why of how we got here. So that was long, but I wanted to get to one of your questions.

Well, yeah. And I think one of the things that, that you were looking for when we spoke, if memory serves me correctly, was you had been and looked at some courses. You looked at some, you did some due diligence, and in the end what you really were looking for was someone to kind of help you, do it with you, work alongside of you, train you more closely and help you really see what you should be doing and should not be doing, which versus just pure self-study. Type of information. Is that, is that right? Okay. 'Cause I wanna make sure I say this right.

Yeah. We were at a point, I think you and I had had a phone conversation and maybe we'd even had a, a video conversation and it, it's that, it's the working smarter instead of working harder, you know, of it wasn't in my core business. And so, you know, you need partnerships and relationships to get to where you want to go.

Yeah. You took off on your own for a little while and, and got going on things. What did you run into opportunity or challenge-wise in that process?

Yeah, so I'm a big semantics vocabulary guy. I'm always in the habit of taking words outta my vocabulary when they don't make sense. And really what I had come to is I was full. So I took busy outta my vocabulary because I think the word busy connotates that we have control of anything. So I switched it with the word full and I realized that this didn't fit on my whiteboard. Like if I was gonna be the owner-operator, everything in the e-commerce world, something was gonna fall off. And I was just kind of unwilling at that point to, to pivot and have e-commerce be my direct thing where I was the operator and all of that. So I think, does that answer that question?

Yeah.

You just decided that you wanted to switch out of the, the CEO-operator role and you were trying to put yourself more in a management oversight and a fiduciary response.

Yes.

Versus a tactical operations perspective.

Yep.

Yep.

So, you know, and I, I can't even remember where we were on the process with, as far as the playbook and kind of the pathway that Voltage does, but I had realized pretty early on that I had a warehouse that could help our Voltage community. So I started seeing if I could solve some pain points, cuz a lot of the pain point of what people feel in the process Is kind of the ancillary fees that you pay within Amazon. And one of those being storage. And I'm like, well, shoot, I've got space that is not being used and is not creating revenue for my core business. And so just offered that to our community, kind of just saying, hey, can I help solve a pain point? Or, 'cause one of Voltage things and your things, Neil, is that don't quit. So if the single, quit. The single quit point is you can't figure out the storage and the storage fees. Let me just help you for a time being. And then that's what got, we got a product in that there were a number of hurdles, but yeah. So ended up with that storage, the guy just kind of offering me his business. And so we, and we had been in a relationship for probably 4 or 5 months of me working through on a different level than just in our calls and our coaching and all of that, but on a different level of just helping him out as a, a person and an individual.

Yeah.

Kind of separated from, community even. And he was just to that point where it's, you know, and some people get there where it really doesn't make sense for them to go on. And so ended up buying that business and then kind of went into the next iteration of Voltage Community for me personally. And so, yeah.

Yeah, that's when we had a conversation about the product partnership side of Voltage where you were like, okay, if I can't go over, how do I get under? And I'm gonna buy this business. So number one, how do I buy this business correctly? And then number two, how do I turn this business its troubles into an opportunity. And then where do we see that actually go? You wanna explain maybe some of those details across the point? Yeah.

And I'll kind of switch the order. Yeah. I'll kind of switch the order of that. I'm a fire, ready, aim guy. And that's what I'm trying to learn to help myself not be as much.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Some of that's in your DNA and you can't really help it. But I had already bought the business and I'm like, oh great. Like, So I jumped from, you know, I can't even remember in the playbook, but I jumped from maybe chapter 2 in the playbook. The playbook's completed and I'm like, so I already own the business now.

What do I do with it?

Yeah. Yeah. Now, now what do I do? Because I did not—

how do I drive it?

Yes. Yeah. So yeah, that's when the partnership thing came in and, you know, I think we jumped on a couple more calls and again, it's just, yeah, just working through those fears. And so me personally, Because I've kind of worked through the investor DNA and the buy box, my top one out of that flow was I don't want to be an operator, but I have to have a personal relationship with the operator. And so that fit in the Voltage because I had been in the community probably, I don't know, 6, 8 months at that time, probably.

Mm-hmm.

And real consistent. So I knew the people and so, yeah, so that was the next thing of, okay, it checked that. Part of my buy box of like, I know and trust the operators because that, and that's the point you, they'll, we'll talk a lot about in Voltage Community about, you know, kind of trust over feeder. And, and that's what it was for me at that point with the Voltage partnership. It's like, I can either choose to trust this community that I've built trust with, or I gotta get out, you know, like, it's like, because all business and all relationships are built on trust and alignment.

So, yeah.

And that was an easy answer for me. Like it was—

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and we saw the opportunity and, you know, when you presented it to me, I looked at the business and realized, uh, in this case, you're actually the second business we've acquired together through the product partnership. But there's another acquisition that was done with a, with another operator. Maybe I'll drag him into one of these calls at some point, but the business was bought out of an existing Amazon company and then they had some issues in which they, you know, needed some turnaround or support on. And bringing our expertise to the table allowed that, you know, to occur because there, there was an opportunity with this product business that had been shown and proven through the sales and growth, but has sort of collapsed on itself a little bit due to some negative product issues on the manufacturing side, which is where a lot of people would've given up. They would've said, oh no, the whole thing doesn't work. But you did something that others didn't. You saw through that. You saw what we saw, which was a product and a brand that had a growing and good opportunity that needed a problem solved. A second problem. Yeah. Product problem, right? Fixing the product problem was the biggest opportunity for that business. And it took a little while, didn't it? It, it wasn't—

It did.

Yeah.

It takes a little while to do that.

And, and I think for me there was a couple buffers, you know, because I had been operating a business for 10 years and owned it for 3. You, you build up your pain tolerance really.

Yeah.

Where it's like, you know, as a business owner, the longer you're in business, the more it's like, That's just what you do is you solve problems.

And yeah, it is a series of solving problems.

Yeah.

And knowing where to go to solve them and, and what things to avoid in that experience. And that's one of the things you were kind enough to allow us to do was to show you how to, you know, avoid those problems that we had seen in the past and leverage that experience into an opportunity. So once we went through that, guys, just to be clear, what I'm saying here is we had to relaunch the business. Yeah. In essence, with a new product manufacturing line. Um, that fixed the issue with the original product so that when we could match, obviously sales and growth of the product I mentioned earlier that did really great with a, you know, a collapsing pendulum here, which was product is now giving bad reviews, can't keep selling that product at that rate or the whole thing falls apart to now we relaunch it with new product and the equation becomes balanced. And that's basically what we did about 3 months ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah.

A little less than 3 months actually. I think it was like just around 2 months ago that we did that roughly. And what has been the outcome of that effort? Have we been rewarded by it? Is it going well? How are you seeing?

Yeah, that's, that's where, you know, you go back to the disclaimer. Like you said, each, each entity is in and of itself a specific story, but our story right now is looking very promising.

Yeah.

I mean, we've, we've started to see, you know, on that hockey stick, you know, you're right at the brink of that hockey stick. What you always look for in an investment or a business is like, yeah, when things start to get exciting and we're right there, you know, right.

Ready to escape your grind? We help entrepreneurs build real wealth with private label brands. Visit voltage dm.com to start now. We crossed into profit about mid-month last month, which would have been November. And that profit is now doubled from this month on our way to probably $50,000 a month right now by the end of December 2025. Which is twice as much as we did in November.

Right.

So I would say we're on the right path at that current growth. Since this is not a seasonal-based product type, we will see a lot of growth through the first quarter of next year, which I believe, if you don't disagree, is going to be the trend we're looking for as to how the rest of 2026 is gonna go. At this point, I'm looking out to the second and third quarter for this brand because I'm already confident by the first quarter where we're headed profitability-wise, where we're headed, you know, in daily growth sales and, and profitability is gonna surpass 25% at last check. Net profit on this. Yep. Uh, about 25%, if I'm getting my numbers right. And that's all growth potential for next year at that rate. And 50, she'll become a 75, that becomes 100 right now. As long as we just, you know, product reviews are coming in well, people are loving the product organically. Uh, product problem solved, new launch process successful, and now it's just slingshotting through the next year. Is there anything else I'm missing in those details?

No. Yeah. And I think it's, uh, you know, as far as mindset-wise, it's, It's, do you see problems or do you see opportunity? You know? And I think what I love about being in this partnership, in this community, is that we train our, our eyes what to see, you know? And it's, we don't deny reality, which are the problems because they'll always be there, but you look through them to the opportunity. And, you know, that's, that's where a lot of people get lost is they can't see through it. You can't see the forest for the trees kind of deal.

Well, now having somebody like you come through this whole process from someone who, you know, didn't like it, turned the cheek and walked away for a while and is now in, are you fully vetted? Are you fully in? Are you fully bought in? Are you drinking the Kool-Aid?

Yes. Yeah. If I'm not fully bought in at this point, I'm just crazy. So yeah, you take your options. So either you're fully bought in or you drink the Kool-Aid.

Here's the thing. If you're not fully bought in, I wanna buy your interest out now, not 6 months from now. Sure. 'Cause it's gonna cost me a lot less to do. Yeah.

No, no, no. Yeah, no. And, and really that's buying into the process. You know, I think that's the other thing is you, you either trust the process or you don't. And, and I think that's it. It's like, you know, a lot of things can happen and you look at the, you know, the, the great businesses, the great organizations, the great sports teams without a doubt. It's like all of 'em buy into the process. And it's like, that's, that's for me what puts it over is—

It doesn't mean you win a Super Bowl every year. It means you have an opportunity to win a Super Bowl. You have an opportunity to keep pushing through and deals with the pros and cons.

Yeah.

And you make decisions like you're gonna win the Super Bowl. Like, I think that's the—

Well, I mean, what is your Super Bowl, right? For this business, it's the 3 to 5 year exit at, you know, continued growth and opportunity. You're asset building for a future, you know, generational opportunity. We're both gonna, enjoy as we continue to build, you know, build up and redeploy into this. When we talk about the time and energy now related to this and the attention, how much focus do you actually put on it now as opposed to before?

Yeah, I mean, we're, we're at hours per month now, you know, as opposed to hours per week. I think that's the shift is, you know, is, is in hours per month. And then you look at it in hours per quarter, like is the next step. Um, where we dedicate, you know, focused thought, focused energy. Uh, originally, like you said, it's hours per, really hours per day, you know, at the start to hours per week. Now we're at hours per month and then we'll be hours per quarter. And yeah.

Um, it's cash flow and financial management at this point, isn't it? Yeah. Because we have a whole roadmap laid out in front of us because the product has proven, the sales are proven. Now it's just a matter of developing out the brand with multiple SKUs until we have, I don't know, 20, 40, 50 is now set probably to try to go out by next year and expand that new base out. We are, I'm not sure if we're eligible for Amazon's NS1 or NS Plus launchpad. I'll double check. We may have already surpassed that. If not, we're gonna get on it. Yeah, I think so. So we'll definitely be in Walmart next year cuz we'll be eligible for that with Walmart's launch priorities. Um, we've got that now through Voltage, so we'll be able to take this brand into, to Walmart very quickly in the coming year, expand it. And then third, we're gonna be expanding into TikTok.

Yeah.

With this brand in the coming year as well. So we'll have an omnichannel, 3-tiered brand next year.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's it. It's understanding the, the pathway, the process, you know, is understanding that. And, and something you said in there I think is very key is understanding your asset. Like, mm-hmm, what's, what's the goal and what, what is that? And so, um, I think that's another big understanding is really understanding and not even necessarily e-commerce, But even going down, you know, you get down in the minutia and it's like, and for Voltage, it's understanding Amazon first. Like that's the foundational. And so understanding that asset class. Yeah.

So, yeah, find your avatar, find your business, because now we're moving into not an Amazon sales channel, we're moving into a holistic e-commerce business, is if I'm hearing you correctly.

Yeah.

And what do you, when you say asset, what do you mean by that in terms of asset?

Well, I, I mean the, the actual business. Your actual business is your asset, you know?

Yeah.

And so it, you know, it comes back to knowing your numbers, knowing your potential, knowing all of those things. It's, it's really knowing your business really well. I think that's what separates people is people that know their business, know their numbers and don't. And so that's when I look at that and that's where the excitement comes for both of us is when you look at that business going just from an Amazon-based business to multichannel. Is the next step in the Voltage playbook. You know, it's like, that's—

Yeah, we gotta go omnichannel. It's the, it's the year of omnichannel for 2026. I know a lot of people have talked about the possibilities, but there are actually quite a few systems and business rules now that are allowing it to happen really easy between, you know, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, et cetera. You just need to get to the point where you have a proven, you know, brand structure, uh, a pipeline first, a, a valid market test and market launch and a real good definition of who you're approaching before you go into these other channels. 'Cause there is a, there's a different psychology.

Yeah.

Just a disclaimer for each of those different channels and the type of way people buy and what they're looking for that you have to adapt to. It doesn't just work one for one. I've heard a few, you know, gurus on their YouTube channels being like, oh, it's so easy. You just throw it on TikTok and you'll make more sales. And it's like, nah, it's not that. If it was that easy, everybody would do it. That's the old saying, right? Um, it's just a different kind of psychology, but we'll work through it because the opportunity has already proven to be a growth channel opportunity. And even retail, maybe at some point here, we'll open the doors to that because retail is still huge. It's big. It's gonna be there for a while. And, uh, Amazon is a, a online retail channel and so is TikTok and Shopify and all these things. Yeah.

Yeah. I was having a conversation the other day that we were talking through that one of the ones that's using our service and we were talking about the reality of Amazon being, it's still retail. You know, the pillars are still retail.

That's right.

No matter how you slice it. And so whether it's digital retail or brick and mortar retail, it's still retail.

Well, in summary to this conversation, it would be fair to probably say it this way, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but what we're doing is building a, an asset-driven business. That has a potential time or generational opportunity on the upside of selling it later on through omnichannel. And we're just basically working the process of channel-by-channel growth through brand building with an asset-driven class here where the time, energy, attention, and money is being deployed to a future exit.

Yeah. And again, I'm a semantics and vocabulary guy, so really pick out the words that are important to what Neil just said. You know, it's an asset, a hard asset-based business. that has generational opportunity and it, it gives us really freedom, which is what both of us are looking for. It gives you your time freedom to where your, your assets produce a cash flow that are greater than your monthly expenses. That's the goal.

And that's what it's gonna do. It's already on its way.

Yep.

It's not only self-liquidating at this point, it's making a profit.

It makes it, which is why we're all in business in the first place.

It's all going back into that business at the moment so we can just run that exponential growth. You know, that's one of the things I want people to understand about What we're saying here is that by the profit measure, we're growing month by month. Now we are plowing that back into the business so we can basically inventory up faster and faster. It's a snowball. So as people are thinking, you know, well, could I take profit out of my business in the first few months, 6 months, 12 months? I'd say that's not your opportunity. You might be missing the business building experience of a, you know, 3 to 5 year run at a real opportunity.

Gotcha.

Okay? Like real exits that are changing, life-changing, $10, $20, $30 million exits. If you plow that back in, in the first 1 and 2 years, you will see that snowball effect compound faster and faster and faster.

Yeah.

And I think that's really important for people to understand. And an investment strategy as a business is any other kind of investment strategy for yourself and for your business. You're not investing in mine, so get off the SEC thing for a sec.

Yep.

You're investing in your growth and opportunity.

That's right.

More work. It's a compounding effort. It's a compounding growth. If you understand compounding versus simple interest, you're gonna understand business building is a compounding interest opportunity that will just go over and over year by year as you continue to push harder and harder forward into it.

Yeah. And I think that leads to the other part of kind of who I am. It's, it's semantics first and understanding semantics and definitions, but then it's sequencing. 'Cause what you're talking about there is, is really sequencing a business. So that it maintains health. Because I think a lot of times people do. And really the reason I have this business is because of that. You know, it's like if you get your sequencing wrong about when you draw profits or when you plow back or when you, you know, when you pull what lever in that business. And that's why partnership is important. Like, because it's like, it's if you want to go fast, go alone, you know, but if you want to go far, go together. And that's why partnerships and, communities and masterminds, it's worth the investment. 'Cause if you were able to see the return of that investment, you're gonna go far in business. Whereas you, you might get a return on your investment very quickly if you do it alone, but you're, you're gonna get a return of your investment if you go together. So.

Very well said. I'm gonna end it on that 'cause I don't have anything else to add. Very good. Unless there's something else you wanted to say, Jared, or whatever.

No, no, just again, yeah, just thankful to be in the midst of this process and, and partnership.

Well, I'm excited for us. I'm excited for next year. I'm excited to get us on another podcast here in 12 months or less and do part 2 of this update. I like it. And, uh, tell everybody where we are and what channels we're on and how well it's going. Or maybe we'll tell 'em how bad it's going.

I don't know.

I'm, I'm all down for it.

We might have to have a, a confessional podcast.

We might have a confessional podcast. Yes. The postmortem podcast. I don't like that.

The postmortem of what went wrong. It's always a possibility.

Who knows?

Life is what it is, man. I can't control all the things of the world, but I can certainly try and control the controllables. Rule number one at my house. Well, thanks for coming on, man, and sharing a good word.

Thanks, Neil. Appreciate it. I appreciate it.

Guys, like, share, comment, as always, ask questions. You can connect with Jared anytime through us or our website if you want to just chat with him personally. Check out the additional podcast with Ashley and David as well, just to get better understanding of the different stories that apply to the business building world. As always, uh, I would encourage you to share this with someone else who's thinking or wondering, is Is it for me? Is it the right time? Or is there any opportunity in it? In building a business, to be very clear, uh, while we talked about starting on the Amazon channel, that is not a business yet until you omnichannel or create a stability in the business by lowering its risk, which is creating more product and creating more channels of sales. So to be very clear, we're building businesses. We're not building single sales channels. There's a very big difference in that, right? And as always, as I end on these, I, guys, I thank you so much for your time and your subscription to following along and listening to the podcast. We've moved from the top 3% on Listen Notes to the top 2.5%. So thanks to my listeners and followers from everybody who stay with us and keep getting a good word. But I appreciate everything you do. And as always, I remind you, your opportunity begins at the end of your excuses. See you on the next episode.

You this, if you're serious about building an e-commerce business starting on Amazon FBA, what if myself and my team worked with you one-on-one to execute the steps outlined in the podcast while helping you discover what the heck to sell, how to make sure it's profitable, and how to successfully launch a brand? Plus, How to do it under a consulting plus performance-driven model where I put a $10,000 skin-in-the-game guarantee for those that show up and are serious about building a real business done with us. If yes, text keyword profit to +1-417-413-4209. That's 1-417-413-4209, and I will personally respond with a few simple questions. If you're not in the U.S. or Canada, please visit voltage dm dot com. That's voltage dm dot com. Click. Get started and book a no-pressure discovery call with me or a member of my team to learn more about the Business Builders one-on-one coaching and mentoring for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and those looking to build an empire or retire using the power of e-commerce. Once again, thank you for listening, and be sure to tune in next week for a brand new episode of the High Voltage Business Builders podcast.