006: Mastering E-Commerce: Mike Jackness on Building Brands, Diversifying Sales Channels, and Striking a Work-Life Balance

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everybody to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, john Stogin, and we have Mike Jackness with us today. He's an entrepreneur and has been on Amazon in the Amazon space for almost a decade A serial entrepreneur, really from the age of 18, been full-time for over 20 years in the entrepreneurial world building brands, growing brands, buying brands, selling brands on Amazon and beyond, and he shares a lot of this journey of wins and losses, both on Amazon and then through Econ Crew. So, mike, I'm really excited to have you on the show. For folks that aren't familiar with you, can you kind of introduce yourself and give them a little bit of background?

Speaker 2: 0:43

Yeah, I mean, you did a pretty good job there, making me feel old, at least with a bit of them. Yeah, I mean, it is now over 20 years. I just celebrated my 20-year anniversary. I started the business. That kind of like led me to quit my job. I quit my job actually in the summer of 2004. So not quite 20 years from that perspective, but 20 years nonetheless. And before that I was doing my own thing for a stint as well, until one of my clients hired me. But to circle up to just the e-commerce space, I've been doing that for about a decade. I started with the park domain treadmillcom and just decided one day I wanted to get into e-commerce. So I was out on a hike and was like I don't want to be an affiliate marketer anymore. I need to do something better with my life. And that's what it ended up being. And so, without any e-commerce experience, I researched all the platforms, spun up a platform, figured out who all the players were in the industry and started selling. And I was like I'm going to start selling fitness equipment. And we sold millions of dollars of fitness equipment before selling that brand in 2015. And right at that same time that I bought another business, I also started Ecom Crew and I was like I'm going to document this whole thing along the way, and it certainly has not been straight up into the right. There's been a lot of great wins, there's been a lot of big losses, but the thing that I always just get frustrated with is, whenever you read something in the media or you listen to podcasts, it's typically chest palming about how easy this stuff is, or how easy entrepreneurship is, et cetera, and I want to do something different in that I would just share all the stupid stuff that I did, or all the hard things that came up as well, to make people feel like they weren't alone in that journey, because a lot of times, that that's the more prevalent thing that happens than the big wins.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Yeah, I think that that's. I mean, I think that there's a ton of people that you've helped with that, myself included. So, a little bit of background. Just my personal journey starting out in 2018, 2019, kind of learning things on Amazon. I had an e-commerce business for a few years and you were an amazing resource in kind of learning the ropes of Amazon at that time, because there wasn't nearly as much as many resources out there. And then, you know, helping me through some different challenges that I had with the business at the time and selling on Amazon. So just thank you for all the things that you do for you know, people that are trying to build businesses and build brands and the e-commerce space, because I really do think that that's really valuable to have. Not, you know, like you said, everybody talks about the wins, but you know what does that journey look like? The ups and the downs portion of it, I think, is incredibly valuable.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Yeah, and thank you for saying that. As you're kicking off a podcast here, you'll learn that podcasting is one of these really weird mediums where you're talking into a microphone, you get to talk to a guest, but you don't really ever get to interact with your audience, and so very rarely do I actually get to hear what you just said. And so it does help Because, like some days, you're just like why am I even doing this? It is a lot of work, but usually once a month or every few, you know a few weeks or whatever, and especially when I go to a conference, all of a sudden it's like oh okay, this is why I'm doing it. So it's cool to hear that you were involved and listen to our stuff in the early days. I'm glad it was helpful.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Yeah, thank you. So I wanted to, you know, maybe dial back a little bit, and I'm just curious because I feel like maybe we're in another one of those pivotal points in e-commerce. So what pushed you, you know, kind of looking back at your history, to go from kind of that affiliate to into e-commerce? Like what did you see where you said, you know what I really need to transition from you know the current, from this affiliate business model into, you know, e-commerce and kind of where you are today?

Speaker 2: 4:39

Yeah, it's interesting that you asked that question right now and kind of mentioned that there's some parallels in what we're dealing with now in e-commerce, because I see a lot of that. But you know, in 2004, I started this affiliate marketing business and it was easy right. I mean it was kind of the dawn of the internet and Google search and all kinds of things were just kind of getting started there, and so you know, there was a lot of being at the right place at the right time. Again, it was super easy. But over almost 10 years of doing that, I just really kind of realized that in soul searching that I wasn't really adding a lot of value to the world. I mean, it really did kind of bother me. You know, just if you think about a lot of affiliate sites, even to this day they're recommending the product that pays them the most or they're doing a lot of black hat crap or disingenuous stuff to kind of pull the wool over of. You know, just unsophisticated people that are on the internet which is most people on the internet they don't realize that they're being kind of lied to or misled in some way, and you know I'm guilty of this. Again, that's what I was kind of doing back in the day, but I was young and just, you know, and had no money and you know you're hustling to eke out a career. But you know, over time I guess maybe you want to do better as you get older and have a different perspective. And I actually remember the exact moment where I was just like decide to go, do this. I was actually out on a hike and just kind of thinking about life and what I want to be doing from here, and you know a large part of it was I thought that Google was going to kind of put the hammer down on these types of sites and I wanted to be ahead of the curve. And you know I was like, you know, instead of always trying to game Google and get ahead of the curve, I started thinking from perspective of they're right again because of all the things I just mentioned, and so, instead of doing that, I was like I'm going to start actually providing value, more value to the world, by actually selling something and having a quote, unquote legitimate site. And that's what I did, and you know I didn't get it all perfect the first go around, but I thought that again, by actually selling the fitness equipment. Rather than being an affiliate and pushing people to some other website to go by it and making an affiliate commission, it would be better to actually service the customers and do all that. And there was a long progression from there of how we got to where we are now. But that was, in that moment, my thought process and you know I'm definitely glad that I made the change.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Yeah, and I think that that's such an important point is and again, I feel like we're in one of those and I guess you know because I've been listening to some of your more recent podcasts how do you compare that to where you think we're at? You know, kind of now, as far as I think, there's a lot of brands out there that are looking to grow and or at least they're looking at the landscape and they're saying you know it's getting a lot more or a lot harder based on competition. Ad costs are getting a lot more expensive. You know what's what advice? Or you know what do you see kind of on the horizon for? You know, brands that want to continue to be successful on Amazon and beyond.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Yeah, like I was saying, I miss, it's interesting how many parallels I see to my journey in affiliate and also now my journey in an e-commerce. The parallel part is that it was easy, right, like when I got into e-commerce because, you know, it was interesting, like the affiliate space was starting to really ramp up with competition and getting much more difficult, I ended up in e-commerce, which was like a reset back, you know, going back 10 years, right, I mean it. Just it was so easy, like selling on Amazon in 2015 was so darn easy it was. You know I would love to go back to that point. And the other parallel I kind of see now is just that you know, over time, like what did work isn't going to work, moving forward, and so when you think about e-commerce in 2024 and beyond, what we were doing in 2014, where we were, you know, doing private label and you know just finding, finding basically existing products Now we always, from the beginning, did small improvements and tried to make things better. We always focused on making high quality products, and so I'm proud of that. We weren't just selling crap and putting in minimal effort. We always put in, you know, enough effort to make it better and try to sell a legitimately good product and still do. But that simply just isn't good enough anymore. You know, if you have a relatively commoditized product, like we do with the brand that we currently just own right now, because we sold a bunch of stuff this year it's a tough spot to be in, because now you're competing against, visually, a much lower quality product and a plethora of sellers selling that other product, the cheaper version of the product, that visually looks relatively the same. You can't really differentiate around ice pack visually. You can communicate the best you can by having a higher price or putting some texting, your bullet points or your imagery, but most people don't read that stuff and so the bulk of the sales end up with the copycat product. And so I think you know, if you think about again 2024 and beyond, it's going to take like a leapfrog amount of effort, like it's not going to be just a little bit more effort to. I think, to be successful You're going to have to really, you know, focus on brand, focus on making a very unique or defensible product, focus on using intellectual property or patents or something to build a moat around you, focus on adding complexity into your business that international sellers might have a much harder time doing. Maybe that's some late manufacturing in the United States or in your local area, or having things that just can't be replicated easily around the world, and probably combining all of that, which is a lot, to then actually be successful and build a moat and have a defensible brand. For you know, if you think about the rest of the decade, because what's for certain is there will be more people jumping into e-commerce as sellers and there will continue to be this trend of more people jumping in selling than there are buyers. I mean, e-commerce is growing, but the competition's growing at a faster rate than the amount of buyers jumping into the space. Amazon will continue to squeeze us. They're going to continue to raise fees, cost of goods are going to continue to go up, cost of ads are going to continue to go up, cost of everything's going to continue to go up, and so if you have, you know, this race to the bottom type business, I think that it's only a matter of time before you hit rock bottom, which is zero, and have to turn it off, and so you got to do all those other things moving forward to be successful, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yeah, and I think that that's a lot of great points and things for brands to consider of. It's not going to be just there's not like one golden BB anymore, one solution to that where you can wave a magic wand to have a defensible brand as things get more competitive. It's got to be a combination of having IP, having, you know, strong brand recognition and a lot of the other things that you brought up in order to continue to be successful and to move that brand forward. I'm curious and it's something that I'm starting to look more into, but haven't done a ton yet and obviously they're getting a lot of press for it. But, you know, do you have any thoughts on, like the TikTok marketplace and what I guess, from two aspects to one, you know, from owning a brand, you know, is there enough traction there yet to be any sort of alternative to Amazon? And two, I guess, do you expect to see maybe some improvement for sellers on Amazon brought on by pressure from, you know, some of these other marketplaces, especially they're coming in from China to try and compete with Amazon as a platform?

Speaker 2: 12:49

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that TikTok shop has legs, and I think, you know, the next thing that comes along and the next thing comes along well as well, there's always something new that I've been doing this for 10 years, so there was a time when, like Facebook, ads were all the rage. Similar to, it feels very similar to TikTok shop right now, and so, you know, I would encourage people to go full bore on TikTok shop, especially if you have the right type of products, and I think that there are certain types of products that work really well with social media. You know, and we don't really have those products right now. We're selling ice packs. The last brand we have right now is IceRaps, and so I think back to the days of Color it. You know, if we still own Color it, we would absolutely be leveraging TikTok. You know you need a product that people are looking at a short form video clip and within 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever are like oh my God, I need this right and so like. It's that type of product that triggers that type of response. People aren't going to do that with a. You know, I stuck the thing in the freezer and it got cold. It's not very exciting, unfortunately, but you show somebody something cold like a high-end coloring book or something really neat with artwork or whatever, and you're going to get that emotional trigger, which is why Color it was so successful with social media and Facebook ads back in 2016, 2017, 2018, you know, and why we never bother advertising ice wraps on social media. So I mean, and so you know, is it going to eat into Amazon? I mean, maybe around the edges, but like Amazon has a crazy amount of infrastructure. People have to really understand what it takes to have a footprint. It's similar to the Tesla charging network. I mean, this is not a replicatable, easy thing to just roll out. You know, you have to be able to fulfill all of these packages in a really fast timeframe and Amazon has a fulfillment center in like 38 states or something crazy, and probably 48 of the 50 top cities in the country or maybe even more. I mean, we live in Las Vegas here and it's very rare for us to wait even 24 hours for something to show up at this point from Amazon. Like they just same day or early morning next day delivery. It's, all you know, part of your prime subscription. You know. That's something that TikTok shop just can't replicate, right. I mean, they're just helping you sell your goods, and so someone's got to be able to handle the fulfillment part of it. Amazon's got a freaking billion SKUs under their roof and they sell a bunch of stuff that just again isn't going to resonate Like where are you going to go to buy your pens and pencils or your iPhone case, or you know you need some wine glasses or toilet paper or a mouse pad or you know whatever random crap. People just buy on Amazon because it's like a household good or something that they need quickly and they don't feel like going to the store. I just don't see Amazon being supplanted in that regard anytime soon. But yeah, you got some like neat new purse or some like cool new, you know polo shirt or something that's like you know the new trend. Yeah, okay, I don't see any relief of that by doing being successful on TikTok shop, but I think again, it's a subset of products, not the breadth of things selling on the internet products.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Yeah, and that's a great point with the logistics. I mean I think about even Walmart. That is probably the only other company out there that really has a logistics network that comes close to Amazon's and they still really. They've made leaps and bounds in the last couple of years but they're still way behind Amazon when it comes to just the amount of products on there, the amount of sales that move, the amount of traffic that comes in. I think you know most of what I hear from sellers and of course it really depends on what category you're in and your brand and that type of stuff, but generally you know they're looking at maybe 10% of the sales that they have on Amazon that you know they're making on Walmart, and that's even with a platform that you know has a big brand behind it, has a lot of logistics and has a lot of the same or some of the infrastructure in place that Amazon has. So it's really hard to duplicate.

Speaker 2: 17:02

Very difficult. And on top of that, you know, amazon's got, like in the United States, over 100 million credit cards already on file. People are prime members. They're also watching Thursday night football and movies and listening to music and they got their Alexa like tied into it and things on subscribe and save and they already have the app on their phone and they're used to it. You know you gotta think about like the average person's not very comfortable with technology and so just like understanding and just being comfortable is like another big barrier to you know. So, yeah, as people, somebody going to like eat away at the fringes, yes, I mean, does every big company eventually tumble? I mean I think back to like Sears and Roblox. I mean people thought that they can never go away. So never say never. Like I definitely think that Amazon will have their day, but as of right now, like they've done a really great job of just really cementing themselves in and like learning from, you know, the corporate graveyard of all these other companies. Have, you know, been that big before and gone away and really spread their wings? I mean it's probably at a level where, you know and I'm not really a big fan of even saying this but it's probably getting a level of like where the government should step in and, like, put the brakes on a little bit. I mean, there's reasons why, like monopoly and antitrust and other laws exist, and you know, I'm a free market kind of guy and let people do what they want to do. But at some point you got to, you got to reign in the bully and it's it's at a scale that that's kind of getting crazy. But you know, until something major happens, I think Amazon will continue to reign, you know, king of the jungle, and are they going to make it easier for our sellers? I don't know, man, like I mean they. You know, if you can make it 1% easier, okay, yes, you made it easier. So maybe it does get easier in some respect, but I think that they'll. They're really good at extracting fees. I mean the other example that I think of, just a random parallel. I mean, I live here in Las Vegas and you see what, like, corporate America has done to Vegas. You know, all the free buff phase are gone, the cheap steak dinners are gone and free parking is now gone, and they've switched to like six to five blackjack and added a third zero to the roulette wheel and they're just like constantly like nibbling away at you. But people still come, and people you know keep on selling on Amazon. People keep buying on Amazon, and so until people are fed up in some respect enough to actually make a change in their habits, these companies are going to continue to do what's best for their bottom line, and so I just don't see that changing anytime soon on the Amazon side.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Okay, and so I mean kind of the Amazon, you know where we're at is. You know, from a brand perspective, is you know to live with playing in that sandbox, especially in e-commerce, just because it is such a large share? And I mean there are still, you know, I think, a lot of ways that you can win there, and you talked about some of them. As far as you know IP and some other ways around your brand, what's your, your thoughts on? You know so for brands that may be listening out there and maybe you know they've, but they're at that, you know, half million or a million dollar mark and they're looking to. You know, grow the brand, are those things that you feel like it's possible to add on? You know, kind of as you go, if you haven't already made those investments or that it's something that it or is it very challenging. You know, once you get the ball rolling on a brand, to add those, you know, kind of competitive barriers afterwards.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Well, I think it depends on the niche and the type of things you're selling. I mean, you might not be able to add it to your exact existing SKU catalog but you can maybe add some other SKUs that fit that mold. You know, I think of, like, of IceTrap specifically. You know there's no defense of a four inch round ice pack that I throw in the freezer or a three by five ice pack. Now, if I was going to stick in this niche which I, you know pretty public about that I'm not if I were I would go off and probably develop a nice pack that you know for a particular body part, let's say a shoulder, that like had some intellectual property built in. Maybe I try to get a patent and come up with something new to make to make that significantly better than everything on the market and really try to push that product. But again, it just it's not the niche that I want to be in, because the one thing that that type of product doesn't have is repeat business. Like you sell somebody a really the most amazing shoulder ice pack that's ever been invented in a world they're only going to buy at once, and that's something, personally, that I'm trying to stay away from. There's plenty of businesses out there that have made millions or even billions of dollars on something that you only sell them one thing of. But for me, like I find like the cheat code is to, if I'm going to be in e-commerce and do all this work, having a brand or a product that you can sell that same customer more than one thing of, you know it's got a more and more expensive to acquire a customer. It's going to continue to get more and more expensive to acquire a customer, and so if you can sell them more things once they're on your email list, on your mailing list, you know physical mail, you have their phone number, you can text and whatever way you're communicating with them, it's free to do it the next time. And so you know I want products. Again, color. It's a great example of this where you know, every time someone sat down to use one of our products, they were using up one of our products. Right, it wasn't, they were just using it, they were consuming it. They're using lead in a pencil, they're using ink in a gel pen, they're using ink in a marker, they're using the page on the coloring book is being colored on, and so, like every time that they sat down, they were using 2% of my product up. You know whatever it would be. And so, after 50 uses, they needed more. They needed more coloring books, they need more pencils, they need more gel pens, they need more markers. They need more everything that we sold to continue to pursue their hobby and enjoy the products that we had and it wasn't like we were doing something deceitful. You know to pursue this, you know that's the way that it is. Like I mean, if you are coloring a page of paper, they're going to use up that page of paper, and if you're using up a pencil, you're using up a pencil. This is something that you know, all of us would just accept, and so to me, that's a much better brand and business to be involved in. And so, if I only get to pick and choose one thing out of the billions or maybe trillion opportunities, I wanted to conform to all of these things that I've learned, and so that's kind of where my head's at moving forward.

Speaker 1: 23:35

Okay, so if you don't mind sharing, you know what. So you talked about the consumable piece. Are there a few other kind of criteria that you're looking at? Or you know that next brand that you're looking at? Either you know buying or building.

Speaker 2: 23:50

Yeah, I think that I want to be looking at Amazon as a, for instance, as just the channel Right. So if you have a true brand, you're not reliant on Amazon Like I. Right now I have an Amazon business. I mean what we currently have at this very moment, after selling off the other stuff that we did sell off this year, you know we have what's remaining is just an Amazon business. We're selling millions of dollars of products on Amazon. We sell tens of thousands of dollars on Shopify for price wraps, or maybe 100, 100s of thousands, so relatively low number. And so you know I'm reliant very heavily on Amazon. But if I had, you know, continue to colorate, I mean you can be. We sold plenty of stuff on Shopify. It worked very well through Google ads, through Google search, through organic traffic. It worked really well. With Facebook. It worked well with Instagram. I would imagine it would work well with TikTok. There's an opportunity to get into retail, be on retail shelves, to use affiliates to leverage influencers. I want to be able to promote my products and how my products will sell anywhere in the ecosystem and have that continue to build upon itself and breed success and not be reliant on any one platform for that success. Because then you're in a position I'm in right now where, like I am, beholden Amazon good, bad or indifferent for everything my inventory, for my ads, for my products, for their fulfillment fees and you know, if I decide I want to jump ship and go somewhere else. There is nowhere else, and so I don't want to be in that position. But if I was a brand that was selling all these different channels, well, I mean I can choose to turn off Amazon if it ever got too bad, for whatever reason, or I'm leveraging it to my benefit, not to just their benefit, to grow that brand in that business, and so that's the way that I kind of think about it.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense as far as and I really like what you said there as far as Amazon being a channel in the brand, not the channel. It just gives you a lot more options when you start looking at a product in a brand that ideally has the capability to do, you know, old brick and mortar retail there's still a ton of business that's done there and then selling off your own website, whether you're hosting on Shopify or something else, and even some of these other channels that we talked about Walmart, depending on if it's a good fit. Etsy is also another channel where there's still quite a bit of revenue happening and sales happening. So, yeah, it's nice to have something where you can branch out, you know, outside of the Amazon ecosystem and just look at it. As you know, it's a great channel, but it's not being your only channel in order to read customers. You talked about some of the businesses that you exited over the last year. Can you share a little bit on your thought process behind you know, because, especially for folks that maybe have more than one brand, how you thought about that and you know what led to your decision to, you know, maybe exit a couple of those brands?

Speaker 2: 26:56

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean it was multifaceted. The reason for selling there was just several different things kind of bouncing around in my head. We'll start with the easy one, the one thing you know. So I look at you know my mastermind groups and just other people that I've become really good friends with in the industry and just in business in general, and the most successful people I know have been focused on one brand. There are successful people that have 5, 10, 20 brands. They build a conglomerate, whatever Like. It's not like. It doesn't happen. But the reality is the focus person tends to do the best and even if they're focused on a less good brand or a less good business, it doesn't matter. You don't have to have the best ever business. You can have a 3 out of 10 great concept in business, but if you're focused just on that and only that, your chances of success are better than having 10, 7, you know out of 10 opportunities. In my opinion it's just it's something that at first sounds so stupid I never would accept it until I finally just kind of got over the hump. But you know the reality is is if you got 5 brands, you're having to maintain 5 social media accounts and maintain 5 different teams of people and set goals for all those 5 things and, you know, send out an email campaigns for all 5 of them and be working on brand messaging for all of them and it was just a lot of moving parts and e-commerce and business in general and trying to do a 100% good job on all 5 brands at all times is basically impossible, at least it is for me. Maybe there's people out there that are better at this than me. Maybe you know, if you get to a certain size, okay, it's different. If you're running 500 million dollar brands, you can probably do that. You can probably be the CEO of all 5 of them because you have full silos of teams underneath each one. You can go spend 5 hours a week just meeting with the CEO of each of those and looking at KPIs and making sure those businesses are running really well. But for the size of brands that we have, we don't have that infrastructure in those teams, right? So, like you're the one that's pulled like Stretch Armstrong in every freaking direction and I finally just conceded to this fact and just wanted to be working on one thing and it's already been an incredible difference. I mean, it's only been a few months, but it's an incredible difference in every possible way. Like I see all these things that like were falling through the cracks for years and have time to address them now. So that was part of it. There was also, like, a higher level of like where do I want to position myself in e-commerce and in business, moving forward thought process, right? So all these things I just kind of mentioned the brands that we had weren't really, I think, poised in position to meet all these criteria long term. They were successful businesses. They were making money. One of them was very successful, was doing seven figures of EBITDA, so it's not like these are unsuccessful brands and the person took it over, I think, will do very well with it. It's just again, if I can only pick one thing and that's the one thing I'm going to be working on, there's only so many businesses and types of brands and niches out there that meet all the criteria that was just mentioning and that's the one I want to be playing in. I've learned a lot through the School of Hard Knocks over the last 20 years and I want to apply that knowledge to build the best possible thing that I can, and there'll be plenty of other opportunities out there that I just won't be able to do. That's the hardest thing for an entrepreneur is they just can see that I'm only going to do one thing and all these other opportunities someone else will just have to do that. Right, I've coined this term. You can drown yourself in the opportunity. Right. If you try to do all of it, you can literally drown yourself in opportunity From an entrepreneur. You look at everything, like I'm looking around my house right now and there's like we have these shutters Well, I could be on the shutter business. They make a ton of money. It's like these guys, I feel stupid not to do that. I'm looking at paintings in my room right now that are framed. Why would I not have a framing business? Because I can make tons of money selling frames. And you think about all the niches and e-commerce like why can't I just do this, this and this and this? And I should probably also be running a solar company right now, because solar is more profitable and popular than ever. And again, you can't do all this stuff. I mean, yeah, there's tons of businesses for sale and tons of opportunity out there, but just pick one and focus on that and do just that Again, I think you'll be more successful. So that's kind of where I'm at, and that's the main reason behind the sell-offs over the last year.

Speaker 1: 31:33

Okay, yeah, and I think that that's such a valuable thing for us to learn, just as, from an individual perspective, as far as well, one and I put myself in this boat. As an entrepreneur, I'm always looking for you know what's that next? And, quite frankly, you know a new idea is always more fun than you know continuing to work on the business that you have where you know you really need to work on. You know you really need to roll up your sleeves and put in a lot of effort to, you know, move it forward. That 10% or 15%, at least for me, isn't nearly as much fun as the idea of starting something new and all that you know is entailed in that. And then also, you know because I kind of feel the same way is that you know you look at someone like you know Elon Musk, who's running Tesla and SpaceX, and well, I guess it's X now. You know and you know, and those are his three major businesses. There's probably five others that you know he's. You know at least someone involved in running in addition to that. And at least you know speaking for myself, like there's a reason why you know we're very in awe of what he's able to do is because I can't be Elon Musk and if I try to, you know, do what he does, I just don't have, like I'm just not built for that. You know capacity and that mindset and so at least for me, individually figuring out you know what are my strengths and working off of. You know my individual strengths, which are not the same as being able to broaden. You know seven, eight, nine, 10 different businesses or brands all at the same time.

Speaker 2: 33:04

Yeah, just to comment just on Elon. It's a perfect example, just real quick. I mean number one as I mentioned, there's a guy who has, you know, a full team of people. These are all each billion dollar companies, right, a standalone. All of them are all billion dollar companies and so there's full teams in place for every one of those teams. But the more important point to make here, what he's also sacrificing is like his life, right, I mean, like the guy is known to like basically live at the factory, like you like literally like seeps in the cotton. The factory, or, you know, works 16 hours a day, seven days a week. And you know, I love Elon Musk. I mean, like I'm a Tesla shareholder, I have a Tesla like I think what he's doing is incredible. I mean he obviously does he says some crazy stuff these days and maybe he should like publicly not get himself as much trouble as he does, but in terms of what he has accomplished as an entrepreneur, absolutely freaking amazing. Now, I mean it's his life and he can go, do what he wants, certainly, but I don't want to work like that any longer. I used to do this, I used to work, you know, in 16 hour days and that was like all that consumed me. But I didn't want to end up like him. I didn't want to end up with, like you know, kids all over the place and like no relationship with a spouse and probably isn't like he's got problems probably with friendships and other things that you know kind of come out of the dirt with you know or mess with this, and so for me, like it's, there's a balance that's important of you know. I know that the business stuff is important to me. I can't shake that because it's just ingrained in my personality and it's a part of who I am. So I need some success in some business of some kind to keep me happy, which seems stupid to say it loud, but I know that it's true, and so I got to scratch that edge. But what I don't need to do is like leave a cloud of dust and destruction of my wake in order to accomplish that. I can do it by working maybe four hours a day and having something that's slowly becoming successful and keeps my busy. I also, you know, being a good husband, being a good friend, being a good child, you know, to my both my mother and all in my parents and and all these other things and maybe doing stuff in the community and taking care of myself, you know, and trying to have some balance in that space. But you try running all this different stuff and doing all these things, you're going to end up in the hospital with a panic attack, like I did, and or or having something worse happen, and that's just the fact there's. There's no way around it.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Well, if you don't mind me asking, was that the last year that you ended up with the panic attack?

Speaker 2: 35:35

It was actually in 2019. Okay yeah. And it's well man, it's, I mean it. You, my Apple Watch like literally said like seek medical attention. I mean my heart rate was like at 180 something. I felt like I was having a heart attack, like for sure. I thought either I was never leaving the hospital or I was about to go get surgery. It's. It's a pretty wild feeling, what your mind it's basically your mind from just being stressed out so much for so long a period of time, just making your body do weird things, and that's what happened. And so, yeah, I mean I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through this. The more I talk to people that are that serial entrepreneurs and as they get older, these types of things start happening. When you're in your 20s doing it, it seems like you know you can run through walls, but eventually it adds up.

Speaker 1: 36:28

Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of things that that's true for is that, you know, it feels like you can do almost anything in your 20s and then eventually time catches up with you, unfortunately. So what have you found? Because I think that's a completely valid point and I've definitely you know it manifests differently but definitely had that stress and that burnout and also just thought about, you know, I feel very similarly where, yes, you know, building, brands and business are important, but they're not the only thing, and it's tough to find that balance. So what have you found that's been, you know, helpful over the last few years in order to kind of combat that stress and that burnout.

Speaker 2: 37:16

Yeah, I mean, there's this thing called the Forbunner theory and that one that was actually when I started making all these major changes in my life, when someone introduced this to me. But there's, the Forbunners are friends, family, health and business, or your work. You know, it doesn't have to be a business, it can be. It could be a lawyer or a doctor or something. Whatever your work is your career. And you know, the overall theory is basically like, you know, there's, there's, only it has to add up to 100%. And so you know, if you're working more, you're turning something else down, like you're taking you're not going to the gym, you're turning your health down. You're not taking a vacation, you're turning your health down. You're not spending time at your, your wife or kids, you're turning family down, you're not going out with friends anymore, you're turning friends down has to add up to 100%. Are you ever going to have everything be in perfect harmony at 25, 25, 25? Probably not. But you know, just being aware of it, I think, is the first thing. It's like kind of maybe some of it, like being an alcoholic or whatever. When I heard this, it was like you got to accept that there's a problem before you can start to work on it. And until then I didn't even accept that there was a problem. You know, I blamed everybody else. I'm like, you know, blame my wife, like why don't you understand that, like I'm doing this for us? Early, my friends like I mean I got to work, they got to understand that I got to work like people don't, you know, care about this stuff. Right, I mean it's, it's you got to put into work in the time and it just kind of hit me really hard. And so, you know, I slowly started turning the work burner down and and focused on all the other aspects of my life. And I think that's interesting. You know, I grew up in this. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, I think, during a time where, like, hard work was a badge of honor, and certainly that's how it was in my parents eyes, because they were also entrepreneurs and always use, you know, we got business or worked or whatever, as the trump card to kind of make an excuse so they couldn't do something. And that's hard to get away from, like when you're kind of brought up in that, in that environment, and for me it was always just like if I'm working, I'm doing something like that everyone should be proud of or accept the fact that I'm doing it because I'm doing something better for myself. But again, that's not the way the world really works, and so you know there's what ends up happening in that situation. Sometimes you're just sitting at your desk, like you know, trying to run the counter up of like I'm working. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're super productive and so you know what's happened is that you know I've been able to focus and be much more purposeful with the time that I do work, because I know I have less hours to do it and there's some prints I forgot the person's name that came out with this. But there's a principle of like, whatever it is, if you have the room, you'll fill it up, right, Whether it's your time, you know, if you're like I got 18 hours a day to work, you'll fill it up with something. If you have a 2,000 square foot house, you'll fill it up with something, and one or 3,000 square foot house you get a nice new, shiny 30,000 square foot warehouse that's empty, you will fill it up. Whether you need to or not, you end up filling up with a bunch of crap and it's like oh, you have the excuse of I have the room, and so if you have less room or less time to get stuff done in, you'll stop doing all the BS that, like, is not really adding any value and focus on the things that do add value, or put processes in place to offload things that need to get done that aren't really adding a lot of value, to free up your time, and so I've been able to do that. It's not something you can do overnight. I mean, this conversation happened, I think, in 2020. So it's been a solid three years of slowly chipping away and making changes, but I can definitely say that I am a much different person than three years ago and my life operates way different than in working a lot less, spend more time with my wife, a lot more time with my friends, more time focusing on me, and have successful businesses nonetheless. So I don't know. There's that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:17

And I think that there's a couple of things that I really take away from that is, first of all, again, there wasn't like one magic solution that you've found that you're like, oh, there was just this one thing that I did and all of a sudden everything was better. And I think just that acknowledgement of when you talk about those four burners, that you're never going to have perfect equilibrium at all times for those four different sections in your life, but just recognizing that there needs to be different seasons it can't be work or business all the time, every day, because then that's when you do get burned out. And it's easy to do that because, like you said, it feels like the defaults or at least for me it feels like the defaults of hey, that's the easy decision to make. The harder decisions to make are how am I going to make space for some of those other things? Like, I personally have kids who are teenagers, so they're only going to be home for a few more years, and one of my big things over the last couple of years is carving out time just for things like being there at the bus stop when they go off to school, or driving them to the school or whatever it happens to be, even those real small things where maybe it's only five to 10 minutes a day, but that's five to 10 minutes a day of checking in, that in a couple of years, I mean realistically, I'm probably never going to have that time back.

Speaker 2: 42:56

And the thing is, you know from your own experience that they're going to remember this as well, right, I mean, you think back to your childhood or whatever, and the things that you wish your parents did, or you regret that they did do or didn't do, whatever it is, and so by doing this stuff, you know you're putting an investment in something that is going to matter in their lives, right, and, at the end of the day, probably the more important thing than sending out that email or whatever that you're doing for business, because the emails will still be there, but the kids won't be.

Speaker 1: 43:25

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know the two things that I think was important that you talked about was. One is, you know, it's taken me a while to realize that I don't have to be the one who does everything, and that you know figuring out what is my unique contribution to the brand of the business in order to push it forward, and the fact that you know, not everything is important or even, quite frankly, needs to get done. And I've learned a lot from just analyzing, you know, that, through my businesses and just my day to day, and I still feel like I've got a lot of work to do, as far as you know, finding some more of that balance and probably turning down the business burner some more. But just the exercise of doing that has put some focus on how to find at least a little bit more time for those other burners other than business.

Speaker 2: 44:20

Mm.

Speaker 1: 44:21

Yeah, so in exiting I'm curious, you know you exit a couple of businesses. How do you see you know kind of switching gears here a little bit how the market has changed. For you know, for folks out there that are thinking about the end of mind and thinking about exits, you know both what you're seeing right now and what you expect. You know maybe in the next couple of years, as far as you know, even finding buyers, let alone looking at multiples and those types of things.

Speaker 2: 44:59

Yeah, I mean it's tough to have a crystal ball of like exactly what's going to happen for it. I mean we can review what's kind of happened to here and make some assumptions right, which is that you know, multiples like took a big skyrocket and then came back down to earth and the reason they went up is because a bunch of these aggregators came into the space and inflated values of multiples of these businesses, all clamoring to like build these huge aggregate type businesses and then have a bigger exit. So they're paying, you know, four or five X multiples, thinking we're all Trumps and thinking they're going to sell on an 8, 10, 12 X and run these businesses up. But the reality is that they realize how hard it is to run an e-commerce business and so almost all of these companies have failed and so we're back to kind of almost basically where we were. You know, it's kind of like been this constant of two and a half to three and a half X multiples in these. You know, five million sub five million dollar type e-commerce businesses revenue a sub million dollar EBITDA businesses typically, you know are in that range. You get above a million dollars at EBITDA. It starts to attract a different class of buyer. You know we're probably going to stay in that range, right? I mean, like the multiples have gone down a little bit right now because interest rates have gone up, interest rates come back down. Multiples will come back a little bit. You know, at the end of the day, the way the math works, the way the math works, which is that I can afford X dollars a month, I'm going to put X percentage down. I can afford X dollars a month of payment. The business needs to cash flow you know that much or more to make it a good investment. And so, with interest rates as high as they are, it's lowering people's buying ability to buy the businesses, and so that's forcing multiple down because there's just less people in the market. The newer battle change, right? I mean, interest rates will come back down at some point they always do and they'll go back up again. They always do. And so you know, I think, that there'll be that I've been flow. I think that the unicorn outlier brands will become worth even more, right, because there'll just be fewer of them. And so if you can create a true brand, like I was talking about, that meets all the criteria that I was mentioning in this podcast. I think that those companies will just be worth more and more money because there's just fewer and fewer of them and there's always bigger fish in the sea, like there's always someone who is truly trying to aggregate these types of businesses, that is good at it and bit successful with it. You know they're buying, you know 10, 20 million dollar businesses or whatever, and enrolling them up and they understand the magic formula versus these yahoo's that kind of came in with a crazy shotgun approach and just kicked out all the owners and thought that they can do it all better than us. You know the good companies keep the current people in place and you know make them. You know have some sort of continued equity in the new business. You know roll forward and I think that that will continue to play out. So you know, I think that go make a really killer business and it'll probably be worth just as much as ever moving forward.

Speaker 1: 48:05

Yeah, and I think that you know coming full circle. I think it comes back to, you know, what we started at the beginning of the podcast talking about, and you know what really is involved in the next couple of years and having and building a successful brand. So you know, with that said, what is, maybe you know, one action item that you would have for listeners that you know they say they've got a brand that you know has some traction and they're looking, you know, over the next couple of years in order to, you know, build up that brand to where, if they want to, they could have an exit. What is maybe one thing that they should be thinking about or doing right now in order to prepare for that?

Speaker 2: 48:46

Yeah, I mean I would, I'll put a couple of things out there. I mean I would begin with the end of mine, right? So you want to think about, like, what do you want your business to look at long term? Well, you probably, like I mentioned, you want to be in retail, you want to be on Amazon, you want to be on Walmart, you want to be on Amazon Canada and then eventually Amazon EU, you want to be working with influencers and be on TikTok shop and do. Well, you know, if you're a solopanoir right now or you have a team of five, you can't do all these things at once, right, and so the biggest thing is, like, just focus on you know one thing new in the business, or you know road map. You know takes some time to retraction, put together a plan, but you can't tackle all of it at once. If you try to go off and do all these different aspects of everything at once, you're going to fail at them all or do a half-assed job at all of them. And I think if you kind of tackle one channel at a time, add one or two new products at a time, whatever it is, and purposefully grow rather than trying to force it, it typically has a better result. I mean, that's how it's been for me and you know, the hardest part is to not want to just turbo charge the growth because as entrepreneurs, like you see that opportunity and you want to go absolutely crazy with it. But whenever I really hit the accelerator pedal super hard, you're really trying to like bend time and do things that aren't physically possible. And there are some people that are successful with that because they just get lucky. But I just had breakfast with a really good friend of mine the other day who was going through this similar thing where, like he tried to do three years with the stuff in one year and now he's in a little bit of trouble. He's kind of in a bind and you know I've been there and I think that's why he wanted to have breakfast with me because like it's just like we're just commiserating over stupid decisions, things we've done in the past and you know just what should he do moving forward. I mean, like the answer is just to slow it down a little bit and try to focus on getting really good at one or two aspects of the business at a time. Once that's under control and you have a good team in place and you can go focus on doing the next thing. If you have good cash flow and a good team and a good process in place, it allows you to do it self-funded and not have to, like, get yourself in a situation where you're having to raise money or you get yourself in a hole that's hard to get out of and you can bury a good business trying to do too much too fast. So that would be what I would be thinking about. And then you know, the other thing is, the hardest thing as an entrepreneur is to admit that you went down the wrong road. You know like I mean to give up on something that isn't really working whether it's the brand or the product or the business or whatever it is and pull on the parachute, because doing that means you have to admit that you're wrong. You know to yourself and everybody around you, and as an entrepreneur, that's a very difficult thing to do. But what I would encourage you to think about is don't delay the inevitable right. If that's going to be the result 12, 18, 36 months from now, whatever but you're just a million dollars poorer because you didn't do it sooner and the results are going to be the exact same thing and you've wasted three more years that you could have been doing something else. You know, just do it. And again, I know it's hard because I've been there. You know it's the same type of thing as getting rid of an employee and we all have let a bad employee stay on too long. But you do it because it ends up happening, because it's like emotional, right, it's like, ah, you know. Like you know they're a nice guy or nice gal, whatever, like they're trying they're going to get better, it's going to. You know you can make all the excuses you want, you end up doing the thing. You know inevitable anyway. Like I've never felt like a year later that I was wrong and I'm glad I kept somebody. That's never once happened, I mean. And the same thing will happen if it's not really a good brand of business. You know whatever. Like if you know you can go take that time and money and go do something better with it, rather than throwing good money or good time after bad.

Speaker 1: 52:49

Yeah, I think those as entrepreneurs, because we have the flexibility to kind of delay those hard things, whether it's letting go of an employee or, you know, maybe it means ending a product or even an entire brand that just you know isn't reaching its potential. You know, at least in my experience, there's a reason why they call them hard things is because they are hard to do.

Speaker 2: 53:12

The hardest thing about hard things.

Speaker 1: 53:15

Exactly. Well, those are some amazing you know, some wise words from someone that you know obviously has been involved in. You know, not only the e-com space, but also just marketing online in general. So thank you so much for taking the time today for folks that want to learn more about you, mike, and what you're doing over at e-com crew. What's the best place for them to learn more about you?

Speaker 2: 53:44

Yeah, we do all the things with the e-com crew. So it's e-com C-R-E-W, so e-com crew dot com. E-com crew on iTunes. E-com crew on all the socials, e-com crew on YouTube. We can go sign up for our email list, listen to our podcast, whatever. 90-something percent of our material is all free. Like I said, I like to give back. You know, for me, the biggest win, the reason people always ask, like why do I do it, why do I continue to do it, it's the relationships. You know. It's like I don't really make enough money to justify doing e-com crew directly from e-com crew. What I get is meeting people like you, being able to do stuff like this. Like there are times in business where you will get in a bind and there's that saying of like it's not what you know, it's who you know, and I'm lucky to know a lot of really cool people because of it, and so that's why I keep on doing it. I keep doing e-commerce because I think you know, in general, the people in this industry are the best people I've ever met, because it isn't easy, you know. I think when the thing that I hate about affiliate marketing is, people were all kind of I was going to use a bad word, but let's you know, fill in the blank bad word. Realize we're on a podcast here and, you know, as we're not the people I want to be around in e-commerce, it's really quite the opposite, because we've all been through some pretty tough stuff and it's, you know, similar to being in a trench with somebody or something. It's pretty cool. So, yeah, happy to have done this and best of luck with everything in 2024 and beyond.

Speaker 1: 55:18

Yeah, thank you, mike, and again I appreciate you for being on the podcast and for folks that want to see what those ups and downs look like, I think you just do a fantastic job of sharing it over on e-com cruise. So I encourage people to go check out the podcast and everything that you guys have on your website, because you've got you really share an open view of your story and then also a ton of resources over there as well. Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.