#FlashTopic: 2019 Reading List For Success And Impact With Tracy Leigh Hazzard From The On The Shelf Podcast With Timothy Bush

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Welcome to on the Shelf, a program that is dedicated to helping you get your products into a major big box retailer. Tim here, as always. And guess what, guys? It's time for flash topic 12. I can't believe that we're on 12, and I know I say that every time, but time just seems to be going fast. And I can't believe that we've done 12 flash topics already. This one, however, is going to be a little bit different. There isn't going to be the big surprise when the panelists find out what we're going to be talking about. In fact, they actually already know. And the reason we're doing this is because I wanted to put together a reading list for all the big boxers out there. And I wanted each panelist to pick two books that they felt had made some sort of a major impact in either their lives or how they do business or how they think about business or their personal lives. There really was no criteria on the books, and of course, everybody complained. Only two books. Only two books. Yes. Only two books is all we had time for from each panelist. But there's five people on the panel this time. There was myself. There was of course, Joe Tarnowski. There was Salah Kalaf on there. Tracy Hazard and Tom Hazard were there. And then Shannon Curtin is back as a full time panelist. So you have 10 books for your reading list this year, which I think is going to keep you quite busy.

Okay.

So I know that you're excited. I was excited to see what everybody brought to the table, what books they shared and why they wanted to share those specific books, how it helped them in some meaningful, significant way. So I was pretty eager to do this particular podcast and hear what they had to say. There are some distractions. I'm going to tell you that right now. I don't know how much of the distractions the editing team is going to be able to pull out. They're pretty good, so I'm sure that they're going to be able to pull.

Out a lot of them.

But stick with us because it does get better. We have sirens, we have chips, we have stuff that sounds like coins rattle. I mean, there were some challenges this go around, so stick with it. It gets better throughout the rest of the podcast and I appreciate you guys.

Hanging in there with us.

Well, I don't want to wait any longer to hear the books that you guys are going to get to read this year, so let's get right into it.

I appreciate you guys all being here. How's everybody.

So today's flash topic is going to be a bit different. It's actually not going to be a topic that you weren't prepared for. Big boxers. I want you to know this flash topic is all about preparing you for the year. And so at the end of the last flash topic we discussed the panel and I discussed it would be great if we did a best book review on a Flash topic podcast, meaning everybody would discuss a couple books that have meant a lot to them and have given them a leg up in their journey. And what we were hoping is that we would create kind of a reading list for you for the year or for the first six months anyway. You know, maybe some of the books that we're going to talk about you've already read, but it will be good to get a different perspective on the book and what that person felt was important and it could offer you an opportunity to go back and reread certain sections potentially. Before we jump into that, I wanted to get everybody's quick there. So there is a little bit of a flash topic, except for Shannon, because Shannon and I had a conversation earlier this morning and we talked about this. But I have been noticing, and I don't know whether you guys all have been noticing the same thing too, but I have had clients that are struggling on Amazon. These are not clients that have not done business well on Amazon. They have had tremendous business on Amazon. But Amazon business is becoming tougher and in some cases I have a client that was kicked off of Amazon in December and has provided every piece of documentation that's been required and is still not back up and running. I have other clients that their sales have been cut in half due to competition or algorithms. And so what that's meaning is a lot of Amazon sellers are now starting to look at diversifying into mainstream retail, which of course, you know, bag of worms, if you will. And so I was wondering if anybody else had seen or heard or felt a shift like this.

We've been seeing it for a while, Tim. So this is Tracy, and my voice is very rough right now, so you may not recognize my voice from the last Flash topic. I did an interview on product launch hazards with an Amazon seller lawyer because it's been so aggressive. It's been happening left and right and there's been some weird things going on. Algorithms on reviews as well, where people are getting shut down because positive reviews, like lots of them floating in with the same messaging, makes it look like you amped up your reviews, but it's actually coming from Another seller who's tanking your listing. So there's lots of dirty tricks going on as well. So we're seeing that left and right. But overall we're seeing just a toughening of the market in Amazon.

Yeah, indeed. Or anybody else seeing that?

Well, no, I'll tell you what we talked about this morning, which is in the investment community, there's a lot of questions going on around shifts that are happening. What are brands doing? How are they building? How do they keep up with that? Because there is some speculation that it's going to continue. Now that they have 47% of the market and you have that kind of power, how are brands going to continue to diversify, just like we talked about? And what are some obvious ways to do that? What we talked about earlier is when you're looking for way to pop off Amazon or not be so reliant on it, where you have all your eggs in one basket, is to be very choiceful about and selective about what retailers you're going to partner with. Just because the grass isn't always greener on the other side either. You can make it green by saying these are our consumers and be very data driven around the store set that you desire to be in so that the productivity levels remain high for both the retailer and the brand. Because there are going to be additional costs that are incurred to do business outside of Amazon. So those are things for the listeners to think about is when you're going out there, you don't want to have 8000 stores of a drugstore. Trust me, there's 1500 of those are EBITDA drags. In some chains or across the marketplace, there's going to be four or five thousand EBITDA drag stores. So you want to ensure that you have the right inventory in the right places and that you're cognizant about the trade pool that you have to spend when you're trying not to be so reliant on Amazon, especially with all these tricks that you mentioned about that are happening and they're gonna have to help partner and work that out.

Yeah, I think that what we were talking about is, you know, I've seen times over my career where, you know, malls have a resurgence or big box has a resurgence. And right now I think it's an optimal time for the return of specialty. I think it's an optimal time for if you have a knack for it or you have a product for it. I think that people are looking for and begging for places that they can go and get personalized service. And whereas before I could tell you don't open a specialty store, you're just going to get crushed. I don't think that that's true right now. I think that that's what's growing. Yeah, I think now over the next five to ten years we'll see a growth there. And I think that it's already proven millennials still want to go into a store, but they want to go somewhere where they feel welcome and they have service. And right now Big Box is struggling and retailers are struggling. I think that retailers are cutting every aspect that people are really looking for. And so it was just something that's been on my mind. I wanted to get your guys thoughts on it and see what you guys were thinking. It sounds to me like we're kind of all on the same page with that.

And it's funny, Tim, I was just talking to, you know, Peter Roberts was mentioning that, I think one of his podcasts a little while ago talking about the cyclical nature of and that's one of the reasons why they're actually looking to get into brick and mortar now because of that.

Yeah.

And that's Pete Roberts from Origin usa. They just inked a deal with Vitamin Shop. You know, they were on the podcast not too long ago. In fact, they're in the top 10 for the last 90 days. They've been number one for a while until Shannon knocks them off. She's growing also in the top 10.

But yeah, I think it's important.

Tim, I was just gonna add, I'm just out of a two day intensive Walmart Supplier Growth Summit where they had 15, 18,000 suppliers here in Bentonville, Arkansas for the past two days and talking about their merchandising strategy priorities. And I'm telling you a big deal is to accelerate Omni customer experience. Of course that means in store and online. So I'm telling you they're very, very laser focused on encouraging and they've actually almost said, told suppliers to step it up and build and adapt digital capabilities quickly. Yeah, because the wheel is moving quickly and they understand the threats. Now they're not as good as Amazon as far as online, but I'm telling you, knowing how they're focused on this stuff, a big deal was a big portion of it was the Walmart Media Group and platform and advertising online and the clicks and then they're focused so much on EDLP each day, low price, which is winning in price. So I just wanted to plug that in because it was really intensive and it's very Good. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it relates so much to Amazon is having issues. Walmart always have issues, but you know.

They pick up and move on and fix it.

Anyway, just want to put that in there.

Thanks for weighing in on that. I think it's important. I think it's a shift going on. You know, Amazon has such a stronghold, but I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. If you're thinking about and you're walking through your town and you see a bunch of real estate that's empty, it's a good time to jump in there if you're so inclined. So. All right.

Hey Jim, just one thing I want to get. I'm going to send you a link in case you want to use it. I did a little while ago video interview with a former Amazon buyer who I met at one of our sessions who's now working for Stellarizing and her expertise is in helping people optimize their performance on the Amazon platform. So in case anybody's interested in hearing a little bit about that.

Cool. Well, we'll definitely put that link in the show Notes. So again, the whole reason for the book thing is, is first of all I'm just dying to find out what everybody read and was interested in and then what it meant to them. And, and so in the interest of time, you know, let's not do a full book review but you know, if you can talk about the book a little bit and then you know a couple of key things that you took from it that really helped you and why Shannon, we'll let you go first and then we'll let Tracy go and then we'll fight for the rest of the spots after that.

I'm going to do a plug for Jim Collins. So if you haven't read Jim Collins books or if you have read them again, love all of them. So how the Mighty Call is a great one, but that's not what I'm talking about today. I just going to talk about two other books. The first one is the Way We're Working Isn't Working by Tony Schwartz. And this is a book that really did change me and the way that I thought about work and being a type A personality and doing a lot and pushing myself, et cetera. And the premise of the book is to remind us that time is finite and that one of the things that we can do is renew our energy and balance out our energy in order to make high performing teams, high performing individual. And for those that are listening, some of this sounds like fluffy stuff, I'm sure, but I just want to give one plug on this so you can think about it. There's four quadrants that people live in and that's in the performing zone, a renewal zone, survival zone and burnout zone. But the best performers live on the right side, which is they continue to renew themselves. And it gives you ways to do that and renew the team to get back up in the high performing zone. And if you live on the left hand side of the quadrant too long, which is the survival zone, the burnout, then you start impacting productivity, you start impacting team morale, and most importantly, you impact profitability. So this book is a way for you to be aware of your actions and the time and what you do with your time to make you most impactful and effective and efficient with the time that you have. So I think that's a great book. Tony Schwartz also wrote, was one of the authors of our president and he always has something really interesting to say about him, but I love him. He is not our president, but I love Tony Schwartz. So it is one of those books that I want you to consider and think about.

So the way we're working isn't working. Of course we're going to have links to all these books on the show notes. But is this a book that would be best suited for people that work on a team or do you get value out of it even if you're.

A solopreneur, especially an entrepreneur? I think this is a great book for an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur works himself all the time and you can get into the burnout zone very quickly after two years working 20 hour days. And you yourself have to get into a practice of renewing your energy or you're going to stop the efforts and the amount of work that it takes, the amount of energy it actually takes in order to keep your business thriving versus just surviving? Right. There is a difference between the two and the amount of energy that you need to produce in order to have those kind of results. So this is definitely for an individual as well as someone who has a team. If you have a team of two or a team of three or you're just by yourself. I highly recommend reading the book because it tells you an importance of sleeping seven hours, but it also puts it in a contextual way of how it helps you perform overall on top line and bottom line, what the real results are by doing some efforts and staying in the high performing zone. So I highly recommend it to all of you and then anyone who Is listening too perfect.

All right, Number two.

He's a New York Times bestseller, too. It's not like I wasn't the only person in the United States of America and the world that read it. He's the chairman of the energy project, so he's the energy guru. And I study energy as a person because I think it's interesting what we can do within ourselves and what we can achieve. That was that one. Love it, love it, love it. Not a lot of people know it. Gary Ben or Chalk. Gary V. Yeah, Gary V. Now listen. Me too. And if you don't like F Bomb, just turn your ears off. Or when you're listening to him on audio, if you're watching or following him or you're reading it, just skip over it because I. I love the content behind it. This particular book called Crushing it, and it says how great entrepreneurs build their business and influence and how you can too. So he. His dad had a wine shop when he was a kid and he grew that business from 1 million to 60 million. And he did it through the age of social media. And I have a lot of clients and folks that I work with that still ask me what's the importance of social media. And it is important for individual people or brands, because brands have souls and life of their own to storytell. And each of the social platforms that make sense for you to storytell, for you to have a point of view, for you to share what you're working on. The world that we live in and the brands that are growing are transparent. When the founder is still involved, people want to know about what the founder's thinking, what they're working on, what they're doing. If the founder's not involved, you've got a great brand that you want to share. What you're working on with that strong community can help change the shape of your business. So it gives you steps in the book on each of the platforms so you can understand it, how it works. If you're 14 and you're listening to this or you're 74 listening to this, and you go, well, is this book for me, it really is as it relates to growing your overall business. So it was one of those that I thought I would bring forward in this day and age of social media, important for you to be authentic. It's not important that you post 27 times a day unless that is true to your brand. And Gary Vee does stuff like that, that's true to his brand. But whatever is true to your brand and the frequency of that and staying in the conversation and leading conversations is awfully important to growing your business.

Hey, I'll vouch for that. I built our whole content strategy for ECRM follows what he does.

So I do think you guys have to be a little bit careful, though. So I've interviewed Gary Vee and I have heard him speak at conferences, and he makes most of his money off of advertisements on his podcast and advertisements on Instagram. So he is in a pay per play model and crushing it is actually old. So let's keep that in mind. While I think there's a lot of good things and stuff that you should do in there, it's also an old model that he's not even following exactly. Anymore. And so that's the one thing about these digital marketers. We have to pay attention.

Sure. That's super fair. It does give you. So someone who is not even familiar with what is out there is a good foundation and starting point. But there, yes, obviously there's. When we wake up tomorrow morning, the world of social continues to change.

That's right.

But I do agree that this is not his precious book. It's just one that I like that he wrote as a foundation for folks no matter where they are in their generations or where they are in their life's journey. But thank you for that. I. I agree.

Hey, guys, remember one thing too that, you know, everything speaks differently to everybody. And two people can read the same book and one of them might think it's total trash, and what the other person could think could completely change their life. So just keep that in mind when we're talking about books and. And what they mean to us. Because I think two people, like I said, could read the same line in a book and both get different things based on their current perspective. So. All right, Shannon, any other comments on. On those good choices? So, yeah, the way we're working isn't working and crushing it. We'll have those in the show notes. Tracy, you're up next because. And by the way, Shannon, if you have to go, just interrupt anybody when you're ready and say, you. You're jumping off. And the same for you, Tracy. Okay.

Okay, sounds good. So narrowing it down to two is incredibly difficult. I like Joe was like, oh, only two. You know, there's a time constraint here. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have the team put the list up of my top five choices on the website for you. So listeners, you got to go to on the shelf blog post to See this and you'll get my other choices. But I had to narrow it down to two. So I narrowed it down to the two that have changed my perspective the most. Because I think that's what you wanted us to do here, right, Tim?

I think so, yeah. Yeah, whatever meant the most to you and maybe made an impact that is long lasting.

So the first one is called Profit First. Mike Michalowicz, quite a name. And he has a podcast also called the Entrepreneurship Elevated. And he's got a really interesting model of how to look at your business profitability. And he's got a really interesting mechanism by which you do it by dividing them up into multiple accounts. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before. And I've been handling the sort of financial end of our businesses for 25 plus years. And it goes completely in line though with how we look at our product costs. Like the idea of how much you're reserving, how much profit you're building in and from a both market basis and a cost basis perspective. You and I, Tim, we agree on this one. We've talked about it many times on a show about how you look at the two pricing and make a decision that makes the best sense for your product. Well, this is looking at your business that way and it's brilliant and it's unusual and it works. I have a lot of people who I've referred this book to who are all implementing it and it's working, including one who runs a program on like doing the numbers, like getting your numbers right in your business. And she educates people who don't know, mostly entrepreneurs who don't know about the numbers in their business and what they mean. And she's implementing and going through their certification process to bring it to market. But they have a specific new book, Profit first for E commerce sellers. And I thought that that might be good for this audience here as well. So it's really just an unusual look at the profit side of things.

Yeah, that's super interesting. And I can't tell you the amount of clients I've had that honestly. And I know this is going to shock you guys, honestly have no idea how much money they make. They just operate off of cash flow. And so obviously when they finally did the numbers, a huge majority, we're not making any money. And it's a big shocker when you've been running your business for 10 years, you feel like you're doing well, you know, you're running along pretty successfully and then you find out that technically you're not making any money or you're even in the red a little bit. So anything that you can do and profit first sounds like a good first step.

Yeah, that's exactly. So Mike Michalowicz, the author, he does these speeches all over the place and he'll very often have a booth at the event and, and people will come up and he'll give them this 15 minute evaluation of their numbers and their business and they pretty much burst into tears every single time because that's what happens. So we have a client who is looking and he's a smart guy from MIT and everything.

Oh my gosh.

And what's, what would appear to be a really well established, successful business. Been doing it for how many years now? 20ish years.

I think it's 15.

15. And has a lot of employees that depend on him. And then I'll let Chris. Yeah.

And he looked at his business and part of the reason he came to us because he was only doing 1% profit at the end of the day when he looked at all of his numbers now he was making a living where many entrepreneurs are not even paying themselves. So that's different. But yeah, at the end of the day his net profit was 1%. And so he's like, that has to change. And part of it was the Amazon shift that we were referring to earlier in his particular case. And so that's what he was shifting and moving out of the. But most people don't recognize that because they're not watching their numbers. So I thought this was fabulous. It was really changed my viewpoint on how we account and how we manage. So hopefully it will work for you guys too. And then my second book is polar opposite, completely odd. It's called Life After Google George Gilder. And it was the book that hurt my brain the most as I read it. I felt like I had to Google stuff as I was reading it. And so I like a challenge. So that was pretty important to me. But it really is starting to talk about how blockchain and digital currency and all of that is going to change the way we shop, change the way we market, change the way we advertise. And despite the naysayers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency market that it's necessary actually because our information superhighway was never built to handle social media, was never even built to handle commerce, you know, handle transactions. And so we've like added on to our Internet and bolstered on all of these extra layers and now we're breaking it, essentially. And so blockchain is an opportunity for us to start from scratch, essentially, and repair the things that are going wrong. And the reason we have so little security and so lack of trust into our system. Wild and hard to read, but really eye opening.

Interesting. I'm like a 2 year old when it comes to blockchain, quite honestly. I'll admit that if anybody else wants to raise their hand, you know, when I see blockchain, I think of plain blocks sitting on the floor. I don't really understand how it works at all. I mean, I understand cryptocurrency a little bit. I had the opportunity to have a couple guys in the cryptocurrency space be on the podcast, but I decided not to do that.

You'll get trolled if you put cryptocurrency on your podcast. So I just started a new podcast called the New Trust Economy a month and a half ago and I was just on the Larry King now show. I think it airs tomorrow. And to talk about what it is, kind of do the 101. So that's exactly what we're talking about, is how is it going to affect your business? How is it going to be the future for you and what you should know. And because this intrigued me so much and made me so interested in making sure that I really deeply understood how is our world going to shift so we can innovate ahead of that?

Yeah, well, definitely you can take me to school because I need to learn. I need to learn.

And George Gilder, like, I mean, he has been one of the followers in the tech industry, one of the tech writers in the industry. So like, he knows everybody, knows where they went to college, knows what they did with their lives. So as he's writing this, I'm like, first of all, it's brilliantly written. But I'm like, I can't follow this. I don't know these people. I haven't been following tech for 25 years at this level. So it's a different kind of book in that standpoint.

Yeah, I'll probably talk to you a bit more about that before I dive into life after Google. But maybe, yeah, just. Yeah, I need to walk before I, I don't know, sprint. Jump off a mountain. Salah, what did you have for books that were key in what you're doing? Sure.

So I have. And I think Shannon mentioned Jim Collins.

Yes.

I love Jim.

Yeah, yeah.

I hope you like Jim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

He's one of my favorite.

Absolutely.

I can't get Enough. But I tell you what, I'm gonna go back to basics a little bit with what I read. And you all probably have read this book. It's called Good to great. Okay? And the reason why this book comes to mind always with me, it's all about people, right? It's all about who it's all about. Not what you do, it's who you hire to do it.

So.

So this book touches on why companies haven't done the same thing more often, which is look for the right people before they start putting a plan together. You know, how this book was done is they looked at first leaderships. They looked at what they called the Level 5 leadership. And this is one of the most surprising things. When they did the research of the good to great companies and why they made it, it's because these people have hired winners around them. They thought about who would they hire before they even put a plan together, before they even put anything together. And then once they hired the right leaders, once those leaders are in place, they built up the base to where they want to take their companies again from good to great. One thing these leaders have in common is they faced brutal facts. They faced, they confronted with the book called Brutal Facts about when in doubt, don't hire, just keep looking. You know, no company can grow revenues and sales consistently over years without hiring the right people. And then with these companies, the book did some good research on when you know, you need to make people change, act. So much is always on companies that just wait around to make and take decisions on people that may not be good in the department they're in now, but they could be doing something else within a company. So the thing is act on the change and then always, always. You know how we always say a performers surround themselves with a performers? Well, it's true about this. The book would say put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. Okay. Many companies, they think about putting their best people in bad situations will help turn the bad situation around. While this could sometimes work to everyone's advantage, managers who fail to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, building opportunities is really the only way to become great. And you know, honesty and being upfront. These leaders, they let their people hear the truth. So in other words, they lead with questions, not answers, right? So they want to develop their teams. They want their teams to even bring up more ideas. They don't go in to blame people. They really go into the details. They go into the nuts and bolts of what is it they get into that detail, the minute detail so they can discover and not waste their time on blaming why this that why this happened. I'm telling you they build red flags mechanism that turn information into information that cannot be ignored. So once they found and they pinpoint what that information they're looking for, they give their company and their employees and their associates enough time and opportunity to dig into this information so they can really finally come up and potentially solve the deeper problems of what this book found. And one of the things that this book talked about is a culture of discipline. They tell you about filling your culture with self disciplined people who are willing to go extreme length to fulfill their responsibilities. Again remember it's not about what, it's the who they hire. And I must say I can never, never every time I look at how companies are running I always dig into I remember good to great and this leadership style and who you have, not what you are doing or what you're going to do. And then finally the book touches on technology acceleration. Okay, good to great. Organization think differently than other organizations about technology and technological change. They go find the right technologies, they look for it, they want to know what's working, what's going to be working. They don't waste time on, they really study it. Again, it's going back into that detail and they don't overreact to new technology again, they dig into it, they study it and then they go get it. This book in my mind tells a lot. You know a lot of times people, companies are looking, let's put a plan together, let's put a strategy together. Let's come up with new items for the next company I'm going to talk to. Well before you do that, let's think about who's doing it. Who are you hiring? Are you hiring the right person? Is the right person doing it and are they the right fit? And Tim, I must say if you tell me book one and book two, this is going to be my two books good to great.

Because there's no second.

There is no second. It really is. I'm not going to go into another book I do have but I really want to keep focus on that and I want people to look at this book online, read it again and again because it's basic but it's very crucial to success of a company for long term.

But you know what's interesting is it made me think of back in the day when I was running all the company stores for Oreck vacuums. We started losing some key managers in our Organization people that were really good. And it wasn't. They were losing them because they were leaving. We were losing them because they were. They went from good instead of good to great. They went from great to bad. And something that you said about instead of putting your best people on the problems, put your best people on the opportunities. When I surveyed all my district managers and regional managers and I asked him, I said, I want you to tell me what managers you're spending the most time with. Overwhelmingly, the district managers and regional managers were all spending the majority of their time with the underperformers. And that's because they felt like that's who needed the most help. And what had happened was they were leaving their top performers with no supervision, no help, no coaching, no anything. And these people were going from great to bad. And so we changed it around and said, look, you should be spending the majority of your time with your top performers because that's where the opportunity is. And if your other managers want your time, they need to step up and become better performers. And that just really made a huge shift. And when you said that, you know, putting your best people on your biggest opportunities, man, that whole scenario came rushing back in a flip flop way. It's kind of the same thing. So thanks for sharing that. And Good to Great, of course, is a classic. And I think anybody in an entrepreneurial area or running a company or being a leader should read that book. So thanks a lot for sharing that.

You're welcome.

Tom, what do you got?

All right, well, I've got the first book is the Birth of a Brand. The author is Brian Smith, who's the founder of the Ugg Boot Company. Started in the 70s and he built it over many, many years, starting from a very, very small company into a major brand. Obviously today they're in every department store and shoe store in America and in most other countries around the world. And it's really a fascinating story of somebody going through the hard knocks of how to sell this product, that he really believed in the original Ugg boot. And about that entire journey really starting with, you know, he says you have to start small. You've got to go through all these different steps to build a big brand. And you can't just jump a whole bunch of those steps. You know, today in America we, we've had the rise of big box retail. And he would say you can't just go from the beginning starting a brand and sell into big box retail without first starting at the local or boutique level. And I thought it was interesting. Tim with what you said early on, how you think that, you know, retail has been changing and there's more opportunity for boutique selling now, I thought kind of ties into this story pretty well. And, you know, there's been sort of a backlash to big bucks retail. But anyway, the birth of a brand is. It's a great story, not only about what it takes to build a brand and make it successful, but also talks a lot about some of the challenges that a business will face along the way. One of them in particular that I remember well is, you know, he was talking about at a time when he's well established, after the very early days of trying to sell these to, you know, surfers on the beaches of California, which is where they first started, and how building a brand through magazine ads really started to transform them into a, you know, initially to get known, recognized, become a brand. But he's a 23, 24 million dollars a year company at one point as well established and needs to obtain financing to continue to meet demand and grow the brand. And financial institution after financial institution was rejecting his company to finance because they thought that Ugg was still a fad, it wasn't going to have lasting staying power. And of course we know today, 30 plus years later, after this company was started, that they are a huge brand. So that one is, I think, a great book for anybody that really has vision to grow a brand. I think there's something to be said where, yes, it's a different day and age. We have new technology, we have the Internet, maybe we're moving into the blockchain. There's going to be a lot of changes. But I think there's something to be said for modeling a company that's gone through giving birth to a brand and starting small and growing it very big, and all the different sequential steps along the way that it takes to do it. There's a lot to be learned there. So that's the first one. And the second one is a book that's more of a book that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the entrepreneur networking and conference space, may be aware of or have come across called Focus on Impact by Wendy Lipton Dibner. Wendy is someone who for about 40 years has been in business and she had multiple businesses that she owned. She achieved tremendous success, everything from at the local level in a beauty industry to then on a national level and selling all sorts of different products, had tremendous success, achieved tens and tens of millions of dollars of sales a year in her own businesses, and then experienced them also completely crashing and business Ending overnight. She expanded and grew too quick. But the point is she speaks from a place of experience and through all of her experience got to the point where she analyzed and she's very good at analysis and has realized that over all the years, the businesses that really succeeded and what always worked was to focus on impact. And this book is a ten step guide, a map, a roadmap, if you will, for how to, you know, reach millions of people, make millions of dollars, and love what you do along the way. Having the understanding and the feeling that you can build a business with integrity that is about making a positive impact on people's lives. And if you focus on impact, you will succeed. Focusing on the dollars is a path to failure. So I actually know when she's wrong.

It's a path to failure.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. It is her point for sure. And she speaks from experience and it is her mission in life not just to have people read her book, but to help people achieve this, to get.

Their message out, to get their impact out in the world. Yeah. She's a wonderful person and I loved it because the idea of the next billionaire being someone who reaches a billion people instead of making a billion dollars has magnified. I mean, they might be multi billionaire in that scope of things. So I think that that's a really interesting focus and I've always loved that book. I'm glad that's your choice, Tom.

Thank you.

Nice. Yeah, that's focus on impact. I like anybody that takes a stand, you know, and says, listen, you go down this road, it's a path to failure. Okay? It might not just end in this or that. It's you're going to fail. I like people that take a stand because they have skin in the game. Joe, I know that you're just itching to talk about your books and now that you've whittled it down. And although Tracy, because she's in charge of posting or her company's in charge of posting, my podcast, can pretty much put up any book she wants onto the thing and. But I know you had to whittle it down, Joe, but what did you come up with?

Okay, I did narrow it down to two because of the one that I was going to add I've talked about in previous podcasts, which is the one thing. So I'm going to leave that out for my two. The first one, we're going to go way back to 1936, and it's how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And I think now the title is Very misleading. It almost sounds manipulative. But this book is anything but something I read once a year. I recommend it to any salesperson, anybody who deals with people. There's a lot of nuggets in there that you see replicated in today's business books. And it's very simply written, it's very anecdotal. But basically, if you have to sum it up, it's really all about empathy, really putting yourself in other people's shoes and interacting with them in a way that you know that they would want you to interact with them. It's about taking, you know, being genuinely interested in people. It's all about human relations and interacting with people. It focuses on a variety of different situations. For example, if you disagree with someone, avoiding criticizing people. In fact, Tim, the 17 ECRM hacks that we did, some of the things that we talked about in there are addressed in this book. Some of it is intuitive, or you would think it's intuitive, but then you read it and you're like, oh, wait a minute, you know, I'm not really doing that. Or, you know, it's amazing to see some salespeople, like, for example, listening. The simple task of listening, forcing yourself to be a good listener in a conversation with someone, or thinking, like for me, from a content perspective, trying to create content, but purely thinking of the audience. Not what I want to put out, but what do they need? There's a lot of things in here that are really good for focusing on in sales and customer relations and also social media. In fact, a little while ago I wrote a post about how you could apply some of these things to social media. But there's little quotes in here that I will point out that I think, you know, are interesting tidbits from it. Like, for example, this is one that we talked about. Tim. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on a defensive and usually makes them strive to justify himself.

Hey, Joe, before you go on though, I want to tell you that saved me, not you. And I talked about this book not too long ago, and I admitted to you that upon rereading it, I still found that the vast majority of the sections in that book, I was not doing well. And it's a bit of a blow, you know, because I think of myself as a pretty likable person and a good salesperson. And even looking back on that book, I was like, well, you're not super good at that, or you're not really doing that well. And so I had to have some perspective. But that section you just talked About I was typing an email to somebody and I was really letting them have it, honestly. And that whole section of the book came back to me and he had some examples in there about. Back then, it was writing letters, right? There was no emails. But yes, about that. That's futile. It's not going to get you anywhere. So I scrapped the whole email and rewrote it in a much more positive and forgiving and empathetic way. And, man, it just worked like a charm. And I was thinking to myself, man, if I would have sent off that first email, all it would have created was hostility. I'd still not have what I want. They wouldn't have what they want. And so anyway, I don't mean to.

No, no.

It was reminded. Yeah, it was reminding me of that.

Yeah. And that's what it is. It's a bunch of little anecdotes. Yeah, Little things make the other person feel important, but do it sincerely. You know, don't kiss their butts, you know, be genuinely interested in other people or the listening. Nowadays you see everybody with their cell phones and you can't have a conversation without them checking their emails or something. But if you just sit there, lean in towards them and really actively listen, actively listen, it makes a big difference. They feel it, you know, talk in terms of other people's interests. That was a big one. That helped me in. When I'm trying to get a video interview with a retailer, right, They're a lot more difficult to nail for video interviews or for story interviews. And I, you know, it used to be, well, you know, we'd really love to have you, you know, now you switch that, you put it in terms of their interests. Well, if I give. We can get you on this interview. It'll help us attract more suppliers to our sessions and give you so many more product discovery opportunities, so you'll ultimately benefit, you know, so things like that, putting things in terms of other people's interests, I just recommend it. It's a good refresher for anybody to read, you know, things. If you're wrong, admit it right away. Let the other person do as much of the talking as possible. Avoid arguments of any kind. You know, same thing with the criticism, because nobody wins an argument. So it's very, like I said, very simple. You read it in a couple of days. But it does bring to the forefront just a lot of these things in interacting with people. So. And the same thing goes for, like when we talk, when Shannon was talking before about things on social media, a lot of these principles will also help people with their social media engagement. Again, posting with other people's interests in mind. Right, because people don't care about what you have to say, they care about what they want. So post and show interest and listen and you can translate all those things on social media and your engagement with the audience. So I found it useful in a bunch of ways.

Are you saying that people don't generally care what I'm having for dinner? Is that what you're meaning?

No, because they care what they're gonna eat for dinner. Although I'm interested, right?

Yeah, I'm very interested in what you're having for dinner.

Nice. Joe, what's number two?

So, number two, you're not gonna be surprised by this one, and it's Jocko Willink's extreme ownership. Obviously, you and I are both big Jocko fans. We spent some time with him when he was at our session. But there was actually a couple of things here that I really applied and worked very well, particularly in my role at ecrm. So one of the biggest lessons I took from that book is that we are actually in control of a lot more about our lives than we think we are. So even though we may not have direct control, there's always a way to influence different aspects. And one example I want to use here is content at work and trying to encourage or get other people within the ECRM organization to produce more social media content, particularly getting in on the videos, because we've been getting a ton of success with the videos. They're driving registrations, we're getting sales from it. So I'm trying to get other people involved. Now none of the staff in all of our categories report to me. So I can't make anybody do anything and nor would I want to make somebody do content. But, you know, so my challenge was, at first, a while ago, I was like, well, nobody wants to post, so what can I do? You know, they're not part of marketing, you know. But then I started thinking, especially after reading the book a couple of years ago for the first time, it's like, well, how can I change that? And really, like you said, took ownership of it and found ways to encourage the staff on the different category teams to start making their own content on LinkedIn and, you know, little micro content, short posts and ultimately videos and, you know, some hand holding, some encouragement, some walking them through, answering questions, being there, whatever I needed to do to do that and eventually get them to start enjoying posting for themselves.

I think what you did good is, you know, Jocko Talks all the time about when you're trying to tell somebody how to do something or why they should do it and they don't want to do it. He paints a big picture for them. You know, he starts high up and talks about, hey, we want to make more money. And then he trickles it all the way down to their job and how their job is affected by it. And I thought you did a really good job over the course of many months painting the big picture on why people needed to do videos on LinkedIn. In fact, I think it was your big picture. Constant big picture and training. This is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it. This is what it matters, is what got people, you know, involved.

Yeah. So what I did in that perspective, one of the things that I would talk about is how, you know, obviously getting their faces out there, they're salespeople, so my face being out there is great. It builds my personal brand. But for our salespeople, you know, I wanted them to build their personal brands. This way, when people are used to getting content from them, it builds trust, it builds a relationship with the audience. Then when they get an email or a call from one of our guys, they'll be like, well, hey, I know this person, he's always putting out this content. Let me check it out, let me return the call, let me respond to the email. So, and those are some of the things, like Tim mentioned that when we have our twice a year presentations and discussions on leveraging LinkedIn in particular, those are some of the things that we talked about. So it took a little while, but eventually some of them started doing it. And then what happened was, which was really cool, is they started getting results, they started getting engagement, they started seeing sales come in, and then that's it. I didn't have to do anything else because now I can't stop them. Now they'll keep doing it on their own. So that's the biggest thing that I got from extreme ownership is that fact that we can really control a lot more of our destiny than we think we can.

Joe, I think that if Jocko's listening or if he listens to this, he's gonna have a little bit of a tear for you, I think. I think.

No, no, no. He only does normal face. That's it.

Normal face, yeah. Well, if he has normal face instead of upset and disappointed face, I think that's a win for you. You, I think that's a win. All right, guys, I'm going to go through mine really Quickly. So far, just so you guys know, so far we have quite the reading list. We have. The way we're working isn't working. Crushing it. Profit first. Life after Google. Good to great. Birth of a brand. Focus on impact. How to win friends and influence people. And extreme ownership. Big boxers. That's a huge list and I'm going to add to it just a little bit.

Tommy, you're going to open an Amazon store with these books. You should get something out of them.

I know I could at least open a link, right, so that people can support the podcast again. I'm going to go back quite a bit because I try to figure out things that really influenced me. And one of them, like in normal, I'm going to curve off because it's my podcast and I can do that. But one of the things I think that influenced me the most and is easy for you all to consume is something called the Art of Exceptional Living by Jim Rohn. And it's a cd. It's not actually available in that current type of content on itunes. You can get the parts of it, but the actual cd, Art of Exceptional Living, is a compilation specifically in a certain order that's about living exceptionally. And there's a couple things that he says in there, and I'm just going to pull two out that were really impactful for me. One is the statement, work harder on yourself than you do at your job. And it's taken me a long time to fully wrap my mind around that. And if you're out there and you have a job and you're working hard and then you get home and you play video games and you do this, it's all about your value, okay? You're not paid based on the hours you work, your hourly rate. If you want to elevate yourself, if you want to make more money, if you want to do more, more things, you have to make yourself more valuable. And so his whole concept was to spend time making yourself valuable. He's not saying don't do your job well. He's just saying don't pull everything into it. Pour everything into you and making yourself more valuable. And he talks about that even after he retired. He got a knock at the door. I don't know if somebody actually came and offered him a million dollars to consult on this problem that they had. He said, a million dollars after I was retired. That's because he's valuable, not because he has a good hourly rate or he worked his way up the ladder or any of those things. He spent time his whole life making himself more valuable. And it wasn't a concept that I really grasped quickly. It took a bit of time to realize that I was pouring myself into work and not into myself. And the more I poured effort into myself, the more valuable I became. You know, an old mentor of mine. When I first started my consulting business, I called him and asked him, hey, how much do I charge for my services? And he said, charge right now, whatever people will pay you. And then he said, and then when people start coming to you, you can charge anything you want. And that goes in line with, people are only going to start coming to you because you're more valuable, because you've elevated yourself. So just noodle on that. Think about that. And the second thing that he said, which I think is something that I've not always been great at, but he said, if you want to know anything about anything, and that's what this whole podcast is about, somebody who's done great at that has already written a book. So if you want to learn how to skydive, somebody's written a book about that. If you want to learn how to become a millionaire, somebody's written multiple books on that. Why would you not go to the people who know and have done it and have been there and read their book? He said, your library is your. One of your biggest assets. And so that's kind of what we're trying to do here, is we're trying to get your library started. But everything that you want, everything that you think that you want to accomplish, there are really smart people out there that have done it. They were successful at it. We have a book called it. They crushed it, and then they wrote a book about it. So go out there and get some of those books and read them. All right, so that's Jim Rohn, part of Exceptional Living.

And, Tim, to your point, on focusing on you, I think one good thing to add would be, you know, especially for these younger entrepreneurs, that means at night, or if they're working at a job at night, instead of going home and playing Fortnite, read some of these books.

Well, you hit my. But that's what I say. You know, a lot of people, they work hard at their job, they go, they give everything they can, they come home, and then they play video games and this and that. Spend some time elevating yourself. Spend some time working harder on you than you do at your job. You're exactly right, Joe. All right, number two is even older. And I know some of you guys are going to roll your eyes and just wait until I'm done before you do that. Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich. And I know a lot of people think that this book is a little bit of mumbo jumbo about, hey, if you think good thoughts and if you give good self talk and you do those things and you tell yourself that you're going to be rich someday, you will be rich. And there's some truth to good self talk. I'm not going to discount that. But that's not what I wanted to pull out of this book. Our previous flash topic was all about the advice that we would give to an entrepreneur that was getting ready to jump into entrepreneurship. Almost everything that we talked about in that podcast is in Think and Grow Rich. And so I wanted to pull a couple things out. He talks about having a burning desire. And I really want you to think about what does a burning desire mean? A burning desire means you can't ever think of anything else. You go to bed at night, you're thinking about it. You wake up in the morning, you're thinking about it. You're eating lunch in the afternoon, you're thinking about it. A burning desire on whatever it is. If you're starting a business, launching a product, you have a burning desire to have that succeed. And I think a lot of people discount burning desire. Yeah, I got a burning desire for that. I got a burning desire for that. No, no you don't. A burning desire is all consuming. Secondly, goal setting. And I know that we can talk about goal setting. And yeah, you know, there's like 600,000 books on goal setting. But he talks about being specific. And then I added to that. Once you're specific, be more specific. In order for you to have a burning desire, you really have to understand what you're going after. You really have to understand when you get there, you really have to understand and create a pathway for you to make that happen. And if you're not specific enough, you can't do it. You can't create that burning desire because it's too broad. So understand what your goal is. Be specific.

All right.

Third, believe in yourself. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to strike out on your own, if you're going to launch a product or launch a company, you have to believe in yourself. Sometimes you're the only one that does. Sometimes every single person around you is going to tell you to go get a job. They're going to tell you, hey, you're not going to make it. All of these books that we've talked about. I mean, think about the one that Tom was talking about. Birth of a brand. The Guy's got a $23 million business and a bank still won't give him a loan. They don't think what he's doing is right.

They don't think it's going to last.

Sometimes you have to be your own cheerleader. Sometimes you're the only one that will. So believe in yourself. That's a lot harder than it thinks, because people will try to tear you down. Not everybody has the balls to go out on their own. And so when you do, they don't like it. Well, who does he think he is? Or who does she think they are? So you have to believe in yourself even when nobody else does. All right, number four, knowing when to get some help. And Tracy, if you're still around. I can't remember you talked about this a couple podcasts ago. Know what you don't know and know when you need to get some help. So it's important. When you're building your business, don't spend a lot of time trying to school yourself up on something that you can actually get somebody to do that will do it better and faster and easier than you. Your time is valuable. And then last but not least, stay with it. This is key. And I was going to talk about three feet from gold tonight, but I decided not to. But three feet from gold is that concept of staying with it. Sometimes what you want is just three feet away, and if you quit, you're never going to get there. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't change course. That doesn't mean that you can't zig and zag to get there. But get there, stay with it. Don't quit. All right, guys, so that's drink and grow rich from my perspective.

Tim, can I add something to that?

Yeah, absolutely.

A little discussion about Tracy did have to go, unfortunately. But if she were here, when you brought up three feet from gold, the most typical thing people point out about three feet from gold is just perseverance, right? Not stopping, continuing, working harder. However, Tracy has a different perspective on the lesson from three feet from gold, which is is really what you were saying before about you don't know what you don't know, and hiring an expert or modeling someone else to find out what you don't know. Three tree from gold, she believes is the same kind of lesson. Because if you remember from reading that book, the prospector, who we had all the equipment and had the initial place where gold was found, Just didn't know gold grew in a vein vertically, and he was just digging in the wrong direction. And had he dug three feet, you know, 90 degrees from the direction he was doing, it would have found the gold. It was not, as she would say, it's not as much lack of perseverance and being willing to work harder, but it was just lack of knowledge. And he did not seek out an expert who really knew how gold formed. So another perspective on that one just for.

I think. Well, I think every book you can have several perspectives, and I think that's a great one, and it ties nicely into the other thing and thinkers grow rich, which is knowing what you don't know and hire somebody. And that was such the heartbreaking part about that story, which was, had he just hired a geologist or whatever, they would have said, oh, by the way, it goes vertically or horizontally. Yeah, just dig that way, and then you could have had the biggest gold strike. Instead, he sold that mine for pennies on the dollar. And then the first thing the guy that buys it does is hire himself a geologist, and then they have the largest gold strike in US History. So thanks for sharing that, and I'm glad it was you, because I know Tracy would have come in and just crushed me with that.

She would have jumped in quick on that. She is. Has read all those sort of books voraciously, and I. Not as much, but I've heard her say that many, many times, so I thought I would share it.

Well, guys, listen, Final thoughts. So I'll start off with you. Final thoughts.

You know, I thank you for, you know, bringing up this topic and having us doing a little planning ahead of time, because I think everybody needs a reading list. And I agree about modeling and, you know, all sorts of things. I think it is great if an entrepreneur has a unique vision or a unique plan or, you know, something that really differentiates them to make their unique impact on the world. That's great. But at the same time, you need to do some research, do your homework. And I'm excited, you know, for some of these books I've heard today that I haven't read.

So. All right.

So, yeah, thank you. A lot of good books, good feedback, and like, in good to great, how do you then use it and take action with each and every one of these books and what to get out of it and take action to work on developing yourself, your team, and ultimately you would achieve your goals. So very good feedback, everybody. Thank you.

Shannon, I see your phone on there. Are you still there or did you Hop off.

Oh, yes, I'm here. I'm here. Great discussion. Enjoyed it a lot for the listeners. Have a stack of books that interest you. Take some of ours, take some of your own. And I agree that you get nuggets from each book and you can form your own ideas, your own strong point of view. Do your homework, do your research, and use some of this to inform. That'll keep you fresh and relevant for very well till the day that you stop reading.

Nice, Joe.

I would say, especially based on, you know, this conversation and. And what was interesting is such a wide variety of types of books that everybody talked about. I think that my one piece of advice based on this would be to just encourage or adopt a mindset of, like, creative wandering, you know, or curious wandering. And, you know, wander around and look for books that catch your interest and then dig into them. You know, I find books from a variety of sources. I may hear about a book on a podcast or another TV or something, you know, but they're not necessarily all about business. There are a variety of topics, but like Shannon mentioned, you get something from every one of them. Like the third door that I told you about. I found out about that from Norby Marcus podcast. We get a lot of book ideas from Jocko's. You know, there's so many, just different places that I just. I don't know, I just encourage people to kind of wander through different topics of books. Don't ever shut something out and think, oh, that's a specific type of book. I don't read those. You never know what you're going to get from all different types of books.

Nice. All right, well, on my end, I have a suggestion for you. Big boxers. And that is one of the things I do when I read a book is I always just keep a piece of paper with me. And it's something I learned from, I think, bullet journaling, which was when I find something interesting, instead of marking up my book and putting a highlight in there, I have the page. I just note down the page number in the line in the page, and that piece of paper stays with that book. So if I ever pick it back up, I can actually pull that page out first and find out what I found interesting enough to note down on that page, go back and read those sections first, and then keep wandering. So that's number one. Number two is an app that I use a lot because I have a truncated timetable, and sometimes I want to know what books are about so that I can find out if I want to dig into them. And there's an app called Blink List. I don't know if anybody else uses that, but it's got a huge library of books and what they've done is they've basically scaled it down better than Cliff Notes. It's more business focused to the key ideas in the book and in some analysis on those. And the cool thing about Blink List is you can hit the headphones and listen to that breakdown or you can read it. And for me, it's been terrific in understanding books that I want to pursue further. So if you haven't tried out Blink List as an app, you should definitely give that a try. I'm not advocating, hey, you know, go the Cliff Note version. I'm advocating sometimes it's like reading little clips of newspaper, you know, on your phone, you know, news ready related things. It gives you a good idea and can help stimulate thought and understanding on if you want to read the book in full. So. All right, guys, well, listen, thanks so much. I appreciate each and every one of you and your thoughts. We have a great reading list for the big boxers here, which I'm super excited about and thanks so much for being here and we'll talk to you next time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, everybody. This was great.

Appreciate it.

Hey, big boxers, we're back. And wow, what a great podcast. The panelists really came through, I thought, I hope that you got a lot of insight into some books that you can really put on your reading list this year. Let's recap. We had the way we're working isn't Working. We had Crushing It. We had Profit first. We had Life After Google. We had Good to Great. We had Birth of a Brand, Focus on Impact, the classic how to Win Friends and Influence People and Extreme Ownership. And then I came through with the CD from Jim Rohn, the Art of Exceptional Living. And then also Think and Grow rich. So that's 11, actually. I know I said at the beginning of the podcast There was 10. There was actually six of us. But Salah felt so strongly about Good to Great. He used that as both of his books. That's how much he wants you guys to read that. So there you have 11 books that you can put on your reading list this year. I hope that you do that. Read those and then let us know what you got out of it. Everybody's going to get something different out of the books that they read. Not everybody's going to see them the same way. They're not going to read them the same way. Because a lot of what you read affects you based on the things that are happening in your life at the moment that you read it. Okay, so you and I could actually read the same book, read the same line in the book and have those lines affect us differently based on our current life circumstance. That's what makes it so awesome. So we're looking forward to hearing from you what you liked, what you didn't like, what books you read, what you didn't read, what and the ones that you read, what you liked about it, how it affected you, and what changes that you might possibly make based on reading that book. I don't think there's anything more important. Like Jim Rohn says, work harder on yourself than you do at your job. This is part of that big boxers.

This is part of working harder on.

You is making yourself more valuable. So get out there. The links to these books are all in the show notes at on the shelf now dot com. You can go there, just click there.

Bam.

Buy those books and get read. All right, I wanted to touch, real quickly before we close this out, I wanted to touch on the subject that we were hashing out at the beginning of the podcast about Amazon and the fact that it's becoming more and more difficult to do business on Amazon. For some people, profits that they were making last year, they're not making this year. Sales that they were making last year, they're not making this year. The constant fear that for some reason your product is going to get pulled off of Amazon or it's going to get copied or it's going to get shut down. There's all these things. And so if you have all your eggs in the Amazon basket and something happens to you, something happens to your product, something happens to your production line, something happens at Amazon that shuts your page down. 50 other people come onto Amazon selling the exact same product as you. If any of those things happen and Amazon is your only source of income, guess what, big boxers, you're back to McDonald's. Okay? You're going to have to go out and find something to fill the gap. But there is a solution. There is a solution to making sure that Amazon is a huge part of your business. But it's not the only part. It's not the only part of your business. Now you can diversify your products into mainstream retail. Okay, I know what you're thinking because I hear it all the time. This is one of the main questions I get today is, is my product okay to take to mainstream retail? Will it survive? How's the pricing how's the packaging? Well, there is no packaging. So how do I get packaging? What's my brand? What am I really selling? There's all these questions that you have, and a lot of people think because they don't have the answers to those questions that they just need to keep doing what they're doing. That's not necessarily true. We have the answers to the questions that you're asking. Okay. At TLB Consulting, we have an evaluation program specifically designed for Amazon sellers that are wanting to bring their products to mainstream retail. But they don't know if the products are going to do well. Should they go for it? Should they not go for it? All big questions. So we run every company that we get that wants to go into mainstream retail. We run them through this evaluation. It's eight different categories that we look at. We assign each category a value. We assign each category a rating from 0 to 5, and then in the end, we give you your rating. And for companies that rate out a four or five, that's really good. Those products can go right now to mainstream retail. And TLB Consulting has about a 75% success rate, getting interest from buyers on.

Products that rate out 4 or a 5.

But if your product and company rates out less than that, that's okay. We can provide you with strategies to get your score up. We can provide you with strategies to make your product, let's say, more appealing to buyers or in a better position, a stronger position. Now, those things might not happen right away. You might not be able to affect those right this minute, but at least you'll have a game plan. Okay. If you're interested in exploring the evaluation process, send me an email, timlbconsulting.com or you can send it to timothntheshelfnow.com either one, and we'll talk about it. I'll run you through the process and let you know how it works. But I want you to know that if you're one of those people out there that are thinking, wow, what if something happens to my Amazon account? What if something happens to my product? What if competition starts to be crushing and my sales go down? This is my only source of income. What do I do now? I'm imploring you. Don't wait until it happens. Let's start diversifying your product off of Amazon into other distribution avenues right now.

All right?

It's called the product evaluation, by the way. Super simple. And we only do a couple a month. I think one or two a month is what we budget ourselves for. So if you want to get one done, give us a call asap. All right, you know, folks, how to get ahold of us? You know, we. We're everywhere. We're everywhere. So you can get a hold of us on Instagram. On the shelf now. You can get a hold of us on Facebook. On the Shelf now. You can check out our closed Facebook group. On the Shelf. What now? That's right. TLB Consulting. You can reach us at tlb consulting.com. we're also on Twitter. All right, so there's a couple ways to get ahold of us, but by far the best way is go to our podcast website on the shelf now dot com. All the podcasts are on there. You can comment to your heart's content on any podcast, letting everybody know what you thought, what you liked, what you didn't like, how it affected you. And you can also share that. That's the best way to help the podcast right now. You want to support on the Shelf, share the podcast, comment at the podcast, be part of the podcast community so that we can use your experiences and then turn those into answers for other entrepreneurs.

All right.

It's been great podcast. I enjoyed spending time with you. Look forward to doing it again. I really hope you enjoy the books, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, we look forward to seeing your products on the shelf.