Shownotes
Have you been looking for the right atmosphere to be honest? Really honest? Can you tell others when things are NOT going right? See Aaron will tell you we are not wired this way. We wear a mask, a front. Everything is great. Everything is right on target. I don’t need any help. Yet inside, some are crying out for help. Some need a shoulder to cry on and a block to help build them up. That’s what Iron Sharpens Iron is all about. Men have some special issues and getting them together without their mask, fully vulnerable and open to obvious criticism can help advance you further than any of the top business schools. So sit back, open your mind and open your ego and grow your business.
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Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Aaron: [00:00:00] I’ll have this alpha male kind of persona that we want everybody that were around to think we’ve got it together. And when you’re out in public, it’s like this facade comes up, you have this veil is between you and that person and you’re afraid to let the veil down. Because if you do and they can see your errors are your flaws, they won’t like you as much. That’s what you think. Or they’re going to think you don’t have it together as well, which is absolutely 180 degrees from the truth. The truth is, when you let that veil down, and we have had a measure of success, but when I share whether a Facebook lives podcast interview,
Cool voice guy: [00:00:36] welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:00:49] Hey, it’s time to get the listings, right? So what should you do? You should get your images, right, right. So amazing freedom has a program to help you do that. And we’ve used them. It’s phenomenal what they can do. You got to go look at this. So you got two amazing freedom.com forward slash photos and take a look at this. Examples of what you can do with an image you take and you give them some sample images, some simple images, and then what they do is they take and insert them with lifestyle photos. And so all of a sudden you’re going to see an example of what a plain image looks like and then what it can be enhanced to. Why is this of value to you while you were in the wholesale business? And guess what? You want to add value to the brand and this is just a simple way to do it.
Stephen: [00:01:32] Therefore, all those kinds of services, scroll down to the bottom. If you really want somebody to help really improve this service and you want to bring value to that brand because you want it exclusivity, the services that they offer for listing enhancement will blow your mind. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com forward slash photos take a look at what you can do for your brands that you’re trying to get. If you’re ready to learn about wholesale, then I suggest best from the nest and Robin Johnson, her unstoppable Amazon Academy will help you learn from basically even opening account. If you’re brand new to Amazon, but then all the way to brand building, how do you, how do you enhance the brain? How do you have that conversation? There’s 300 plus videos, probably more than that by now, so very simple, little as $49 a month. Best from the nest.com forward slash e m that’s it.
Stephen: [00:02:25] Best from the nest.com forward slash m checkout the services that they offer, checkout some of the events that she hosts. Do you want to go walk around ASD? Check it out best from the nest.com forward slash IA add an important member to your Amazon teams. Solutions. Four ecommerce. Yep. Solutions Four ecommerce Karen lockers team helps manage our Amazon account. We pay full price just like everybody else. We’ve been using it for a couple of years and the reason is is because of the results. We modify a lot of listings, especially in wholesale because we’re trying to enhance that listing. We’re trying to help the brand. And so guess what? That’s the type of service that we get from solutions for ecommerce. So it’s solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com forward slash, wholesale and you can get $50 off her service. Go try it, give it a shot and say, hey, could you help me get this listing in line?
Stephen: [00:03:17] And guess what? That allows you to go out and develop relationships with wholesalers and then the work gets done by Karen and her team. I can’t recommend it enough. We use it again, we pay full price solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com forward slash wholesale save 50 bucks. Get that important part of your team working for you. So you’re looking for an advantage to help you with at brand. Well, one of the tools that you can use his scope, you could check out their product and then check out their competitors and find the keywords that are competitors are using and check out theirs and see that they’re not. And then say, okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me do this. Let me enhance your brand. That’s the thing you can bring to the marketplace. When you can enhance the brand, you’re going to win that account. So try it. You get a free trial, but seller labs.com forward slash, scope, use the code omentum and save 50 bucks. It’s a free trial. Try it and see if you can enhance the brand. Yeah.
Stephen: [00:04:16] Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 377 Aaron Walker. Okay. This is definitely a different type of interview. We take the whole interview for me to give him the last five minutes to talk about ecommerce, and it’s all my fault. I mean, it’s 100% my fault because he’s so engaging and you know, yeah, I’m a little bit of a fanboy, but it’s because here’s a guy who is so real and he’s so authentic and you’re gonna hear that phrase quite a bit, but it’s real. I met him, I met him several times, and every single times he’s this guy that you’re going to hear. And every single time I, I stand a little taller because it’s like, man, I met a guy who is sowing into me and I didn’t ask him for it thing. He’s just warm and genuine and real every single time.
Stephen: [00:05:02] And we talked about that. He talks about how he locks eyes with you 100%. And a guy has huge tall and yet he’s genuine. He’s real. So this is definitely a little bit different of a style because it’s really working on yourself, you know, or ecommerce sellers. Um, but we’re also humans and we can be better at every bit of our life. And, and you know, for me, I’m a better man just for listening to this conversation. So I really deeply encourage you to listen to it. And if you’re a lady, let your husband listened to it. Um, and if you’re interested in joining a mastermind, it real mastermind, not just a coffee club is he says, um, considerate, um, view from the top.com. Aaron Walker. Let’s get into the podcast. Alright, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast for excited about today’s guest. He is full of enthusiasm. He is someone I met at Dan Miller’s house and I remember my wife and I sitting there like, oh goodness, who is this guy? His story is so compelling, he will captivate you. And yet one of the kindest people that I’ve ever met Aaron Walker. Welcome Erin.
Aaron: [00:06:09] Hey Steven. Thank you buddy. I wasn’t sure what you were going to say on that introduction. You said this guy is full of, and I wasn’t sure what was going to come out, but I was encouraged to hear what you say. So Hey, thank you for having me as your guest.
Stephen: [00:06:22] You’re full of love and there’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s, it’s weird how guys can’t say that. I can say it cause I, I don’t care what anybody else thinks. I love everyone and I think the world needs more love. So you’ve got a crazy story. You’ve got a, well, you’ve got a whole bunch of crazy stories. But one of the, one of the, a couple of things I want to talk about, so you know, you are also an e commerce, so I want people to understand that. Okay. So he’s a bestselling author, a huge group called the view from the top. Iron sharpens iron. You got a ton of stuff. He also sell ecommerce so we can talk about that. But you have a life, had a life prior to all of this, you were wildly successful. And so I want to talk about how you got to there and then how all that stops and your world kind of stomps. Can you, uh, you know, hopefully I don’t bring up too many emotions here, but, but it, it’s, it was so real for me. I can still hear you telling that story years ago.
Aaron: [00:07:23] Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s been an adventure. I mean, God’s really blessed us with a lot of amazing opportunities. This year we celebrate our 40th year being an entrepreneur. Uh, we’ve owned a dozen businesses now we’re working on number 13 and 14, and it’s been absolutely a blast. And so just for context, I’ll go back real quick. I’ll give you a 30,000 foot overview. We came from a very poor family, didn’t have anything, started working in a local pawn shop when I was 13 years old. I met a couple of guys when I was 18 years old and I said, hey, why don’t we take my experience in your money, open our own? After about three months of negotiating, we did exactly that. We grew that store immensely. It was just incredible. Uh, how God blessed our efforts. And when I was 27 years old, we sold out to a fortune 500 in fort worth, Texas. And I’m like, this is the American dream, Steven. I go from broker to con there though, to a retiring his pawn shops. Yeah. You know, 27 years. Yeah. I was in the pawn shop business. Yeah.
Stephen: [00:08:33] Let me, let me ask you a couple of questions about that because I think that’s interesting. How do you have a pawn shop with a conscience? I mean, especially in the days they’re used to it, but there’s, there’s a negative stigma about it.
Aaron: [00:08:44] Sure. Surely going, it’s just a, you know, it was typically they’re located around prisons. Courthouses, right? Nothing like that at all though. That’s just for the movies. I’m not, there’s not some out there like that. Uh, first and foremost, we had probably the best run shops. Well, we did a, that’s why the fortune 500 company bought us. It’s not your CD little shop with the visor in the cigar and in the back room. You know, like we had 10,000 square foot stores. We had many, many employees in the stores. Uh, we had the best diamond selection in the city. Uh, we had huge sponsors of our stores like Dave Ramsey, you know, he sponsored our store 21 straight years. I was a consecutive sponsor of his show endorsing us. We had the best clientele you can possibly imagine. I mean, beautiful stores. We built state of the art stores.
Aaron: [00:09:40] We would buy a location, tear it down, build a new facility there. Uh, everything was state of the art. It was beautiful. I mean these stores were absolutely amazing and we could sit here the rest of the day and debate whether, you know, a person should borrow money or shouldn’t bar, uh, it did provide a service for people that have other financial opportunities. So making a lasting to me though is that you were able to succeed in that environment in a positive way and oh, absolutely. Are you able to carry that stuff forward? I mean, when you look forward, you know, I guess if he looked backwards in your life, those things that you did back then to help make that business successful is 100%. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it all boils down to just a few things and we’ve owned 12 businesses and so everything kind of carries forward.
Aaron: [00:10:28] You know, the way, the way you treat people, you know, there’s certain characteristics and traits that you have to have yourself that I do. I have a lot of grit, determination, perseverance, a high character. My Dad taught me that when I was a young man. So your word is absolutely your bond and we’ve carried that forward. I’m a Christ follower by faith. And so everything that we do is from a Christian perspective with a Christian values, uh, so you can operate any kind of business with great integrity and a huge amounts of integrity and character. So, sorry, I interrupted you. That’s good. Thank [inaudible] person that would, that would, you know, really take that approach. That would really, uh, you know, explain it. And it’s funny, I’m thinking back to Dave Ramsey days. I remember your commercials. I remember them. Yeah, that was cool. It was fun.
Aaron: [00:11:16] I met Dave Ramsey when he first started at a chamber of commerce event. There were 25 people there. We introduced ourselves to one another and he came up and offered me to advertise on his show. And I said, I don’t even know who you are. I never even heard of you. And he started laughing and he said, you know, I’ve got a radio show. I just started here in Nashville. We’re on one station. It was him and two other employees. That was it. And he was the salesperson. And so he gave me advertising to try him for a week. And I tried it. Our business went crazy. It blew up and started sponsoring this show. And we did. We went 21 consecutive years. David and I are best friends now. I was in his mastermind group for 12 years. We met in his office, and that’s where my life was really transformed.
Aaron: