Shownotes
Ok, not clickbait here. Christian is 24 years old and has figured out the best way to reach his audience. His savings and control versus third party channels allows him to spend for staff and content creators. See he is likely spending the same amount as we are on Amazon or Ebay but he surrounds himself with talent or people he loves. See the relationship matters to attain real fulfillment. Great advice from a really young guy.
Mentioned:
Theo and Harris– Christians incredible watch site
Christian’s Instagram (His secret sales channel! )
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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.
Christian: [00:00] Don’t want to think what they think is small and it’s not small. That’s the reality. Um, I have no interest. I might. Goals are not $3 million in a year. They’re just not.
Cool voice guy: [00:09] Welcome to the ecommerce momentum budge as will we focus on the people, the products, and the process of incomers selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:22] If you’re ready to set up a strong, reliable accounting system when it’s a real strong foundation for your business, we think we have the answer for you. If this is from accounting, we will go. You’re here listening to us on this podcast. We set up a course and it’s called Amazon accounting. Simplified. Yup. Simple. And we only say Amazon yet it’s really all across ecommerce. We’re talking about integrating quickbooks into your existing or new ecommerce business. And New is great because you could set it up right that way, but, but if you have an existing business, how do you integrate? How do you get quickbooks online specifically? How do you get set up in there? Well, we have modules. There’s over 48 modules that’ll walk you through each one of those steps. I’m going to talk about cost of goods and I don’t even talk about, we’re going to dive in, parse it, peel it back and help you understand what it takes.
Stephen: [01:07] How about chart of accounts, setting up the right accounts, ones that you can use to make decisions. We’ve had hundreds of clients and we come up what we see at have seen as the best practice and I think that’s going to be the best thing for you. Reconciling 10 99 from paypal and Amazon. Good luck. Challenging. Well, we’re gonna. We have modules, unique modules for each of those because they are unique. And so vendor management, accounting for Amazon loans, it goes on and on. I’m just skimming the top. There’s 48 plus modules and more will be added over time. It’s going to help you get up, get set up or get caught up with strong foundational accounting books. Um, we use it to help make decisions. We use it to help predict cash and cash pinch points. What you’re going to have. If you’re buying inventory and you’re waiting to get paid for it, you’re going to run out of cash at some point.
Stephen: [01:54] Wouldn’t it be great to know? You’re just not great that it happens, but it’s great to know when it’s going to happen so you can plan for it. You can make different decisions based on real solid information, historical information that you keep building. Best part about quickbooks online is our CPA signs right in and does his tax voodoo right through the system and so I don’t have to hump it over there and we can get a little better rate by doing that. So how do you find out more about it? And again, you should look into it. AMZ accounting, simplified.com forward slash, podcast I’ll say it again, amz accounting, simplified.com forward slash podcast check out all the different modules. Checkout what you can do if you really want to get your house in order. If you’re really looking to get that building block established and then locked in place and then you can build from there, then we recommend the course.
Stephen: [02:44] Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE woman podcast. This is episode 390 Christian Saran. Okay, very, very cool story. Okay, so I’m going to lead you there. First 2.3 million are going to be 2.5 million in sales this year. None of an Amazon, none of it on Ebay, all driven through his effort and his team. Now he’s smart enough to hire a team, um, all the effort that they give. Um, and it’s an enormous amount of effort. I mean we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of videos, um, mostly on youtube, Instagram and some Facebook, um, huge amount of effort. But when you see those kinds of rewards, he’s not paying all those fees to the third parties paying his fees to his staff. He’s paying his fees to people he clearly cares about and they offer value to each other. This is somebody who’s figured out, oh, by the way, he’s 24 years old and so his website is called Theo and Harris, Theo and harris.com.
Stephen: [03:41] Check it out before you listen. And I was perusing it while I was listening and I just think it really adds something to it because when you watch some of his videos, you’ll see him tell the story of these watches or tell the connections. That’s, that’s what it is. And so he gets some very, very sound advice. Um, and he, uh, he has a company that does some marketing for others and if that’s something that you’re interested in, reach out to him. He gives his contact information at the end. But I just think that this is such a powerful message at a time that people were building brands. This is the effort it’s going to take. He tells you 300 videos you’ve got to put in. That’s when you can measure yourself to see if you’re successful. Let’s get into the podcast. Alright, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast.
Stephen: [04:23] Very excited about today’s guest because while he’s less than half of my age, um, the three specific things that led me to bring him on, I’m so interested in, and I think so many people were interested in and he’s an expert at it. At 24 years old. Kristin, just Ron, welcome, Christian. Thanks so much for having me on. You know, it’s funny when I looked at, you know, your profile and I looked at the three topics that, you know, the PR person has sent me. I’ve thought to myself, you know, what did he offer? And then I go and I go through the rabbit trail of starting to watch your stuff. And I’m like, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness, how can this young person no this much and be so advanced? Um, and so, so I think there’s a lot of value you can offer. My Listener, most of my listeners are sellers that sell on Amazon or Ebay.
Stephen: [05:12] Um, and they’ve been selling for a while. They reached challenges and a lot of it is that they’re using someone else’s channel to sell their products. And so therefore they’re at the mercy of that company and they changed their algorithm. And then when everybody’s trying to trick the algorithm, especially on Amazon, right? Everybody’s tricking him algorithm, right? Or on Ebay if you stop it after six days and then if you launch it at Sunday at [2:00] PM, you know, that whole thing and there it’s, there are fighting a losing battle quite frankly. And I don’t believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, your stuff that you sell, which is two, 2.3 million, um, none of it’s on Amazon or Ebay. My correct. None of it. None of it. Okay. So I want people to hear that up front and that’s what we’re going to
Christian: [05:58] talk about, that this is possible today. And you know, this isn’t, you know, your, your grandfather, great, great grandfather’s business that you inherited that has this retail location that has stood the test test of time either, correct? No, no. I started the company in college just, uh, just four years ago. Okay. So that’s the perspective for everyone. And so I want to, I want us to start back at that beginning of why watches Christian, why you dude, you’re a young guy. He was one of those [inaudible] watches became kind of popular. When I say popular, I use that word very generously. I mean they became mildly popular. Are there was an increase in popularity in watches, um, when I was, um, basically a senior in high school, um, a couple of like kind of celebrities are getting into it. John Mayer was getting into it. So while certainly not a big hobby by any means, more people or heard about it.
Christian: [06:52] Um, so I immediately kind of looked into it and started reading. I was fascinated by the history. I was fascinated by the marketing and all these, all this stuff and, and it, it took about a year and all of a sudden I realized like, wow, I don’t think I’ve ever read this much about anything ever. I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about anything, but I’m a hobbyist. Right. Uh, so, so a little wild laughter. I hadn’t worked, I wasn’t working at the time. I was a senior in high school or freshman in college and my mom just on a random Wednesday after I was kind of let go by these two jobs in two minutes. I mean, cut together. I worked like 21 hours at these, at these jobs because you know, uh, together. So, uh, she says, listen, you’ve got to figure something out. I don’t know.
Christian: [07:34] I don’t know what you need to do, but you’ve got to figure something out. And I was like, what if, what if watches? She’s like, well, that’s not even a sentence. What do you, what do you mean? And I said, I think that if I followed something I was interested in, I think, and I haven’t demonstrated this yet, I think I will be successful. I think I’ll be able to turn a profit and it’s on my terms and I’ll be happy. So she said, okay, well then Ben, go ahead and do it. And I said, well, I need, I need money. So she said, well, you know, I have a childhood savings account of yours, um, that we’ve deposited all, you know, grandma and grandpa’s like birthday gifts or your cousin’s birthday gifts, whatever it was. It ended up being over the course of, you know, 20 years.
Christian: [08:18] The 19 years ended up being like $9,600 or something. Um, so, so it was allotted for my college fund and then I ended up getting a scholarship. So it was, it was my money. They were allowing me to use it for watches. Uh, so I spent basically every dollar I had on inventory to build a watch shop that had no traction, that no one knew about, that no one cared about. And really by no means was our concept unique and that’s how it all began. Well, I mean, you know, I get why you chose watches. It’s something you’re interested in, but what gave you the knowledge, um, that, you know, if you create this business, um, that, that it’ll work. I mean, I guess, you know, where’s that confidence come from? I, because it’s, it’s odd to me that I’m sitting here listening to you because, you know, most people would gravitate towards a third party market.
Christian: [09:07] I mean, that’s what most people would gravitate. I’ll sell them on Amazon. I’ve sold watches on Amazon or sell them on Ebay when they don’t sell on Amazon. Right? Yeah. I mean, truthfully, as a, as a kind of a third party in the watch community, I had seen that other people were doing this. Again, it was not an uncommon concept. There were a couple of players are making a lot of money and I said, I don’t know much, but I don’t think that these men are smarter than I am. I just, I just don’t, I think that they are very average dudes that I’m, that are buying and selling watches. How hard could this be? You know? Yeah. That being said, I always had a kind of proclivity toward, uh, toward entrepreneurs entrepreneurship, it towards kind of building a business. I’d never really done it before like building a brand.
Christian: [09:50] Um, but, uh, but I had always kind of had a knack for, you know, theorizing how I would go straight to market in a straight to consumers through my own mediums. Yeah. I put up like business plans when I was a little kid for, you know, for a, for nerd, for, yeah. For like Dutch a, what was it was, it was, it was a Dutch fast food chain that I saw on vacation one time I came back home and made like a business plan and my dad was like, that’s all fun. That’s great. I’m really impressed because I also don’t have the money that you said in your PowerPoint that you need. And I was like,...