Shownotes
Mike is very inspiring. His story will emphasize that you can overcome adversity with the right attitude. Success is hard, but a life well lived is even harder. On the other side of both Mike will tell you the well lived life is the much better path. What better way to learn the real in’s and out’s of Ecommerce than working for someone else. Take risks, learn faster and remember to go back and apply what you learn in your employers business. That’s a true quid-pro-quo! That’s how Mike rolls.
Mentioned:
Sponsors
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Stephen: [00:00:00] Wanted to take a second and recognize my sponsors this week, you know, Gaye Lisby’s million dollar arbitrage as edge and list group. That’s a mouthful. It is. But guess what? It’s a great opportunity. You can build a big Amazon business. You don’t need a lot of capital when you start. I mean we all started, you know, um, most of it started selling books and then you move into retail arbitrage that is the place that you can turn your money the fastest and online arbitrage. And so by having that skill set, by learning those skill sets, you can get the best bang for your buck. And so gaze group will help you learn online arbitrage. It’s, it’s more than just a list service. They’re going to give you a whole bunch of actionable inventory every single day. Write Monday through Friday. However, there’s also a mentorship that goes on and that mentorship is so important because sometimes it’s great to know what to buy, but it’s more important to understand why to buy it.
Stephen: [00:01:02] But yeah, that’s that. You know, learning the fish are just getting fit. You really want to learn because ultimately you want to strike it on your own and this is a great way to do it. So how about seven days free trial. About a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is the mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot [inaudible], forward slash momentum dash arbitrage, and you’re going to get a free trial in gaze group. You got to tell her I sent you, right? I also have the link in the episode, but it’s such a great opportunity. So she has amazing, amazing. I’m in that group so you’ll see me there and amazing, amazing person who’s there to answer your questions, who’s there to help lead you and help guide you.
Stephen: [00:01:50] And that’s what gay does. She does it every single day. The testimonials are real. Go take a look. You will be blown away and again, it’s a free trial. I have the link on this episode to reach in your seller labs, Jeff Cohen and the team. They have blown me away with this scope project. We use this all the time for our business. We do a lot of private label. We also do a lot of wholesale and wholesale bundles or multi-packs, that kind of thing, which a lot of people do, but we use a scope to help us figure out what are the key words and so it’s really simple. You basically figure out where you’re going to sell, what you’re going to sell, what category, find that lake product, find the top couple sellers and find their keywords. Boom magic. There you go. You copy the best because it’s working.
Stephen: [00:02:39] And guess what? That’s a proof of concept and scope allows you to do that. So it’s seller labs.com, forward slash scope, seller labs.com, forward slash scope. Use the code word momentum and you’re going to get a couple of days free trial and you’re going to save a little bit of money and you’re going to get some free keywords. It’s worth every penny. I’m in that group. Come and check me out. So our labs.com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for e-commerce. Karen Lunker, great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time and I guess it’s over two years and I’m in there and I pay just like everybody else. Yeah, she’s a sponsor my show, but she makes me pay and I got the same $50 discount that you can get. Oh, by the way, you’re going to get that through my link and my link only.
Stephen: [00:03:25] Oh, and you’re also going to get the free inventory health analysis. Great Way to start 2018, get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything basically, uh, you know, long-term storage fees coming up. Guess what, show evaluate. She’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, yeah, check, check, check, check these out, this return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And magically it’s done. I love it, love it, love it. I love the fact that they take and get rid of stranded inventory for me. I see it in there. And then next time I go in and it’s gone. Love it. Love it, love it. Got An ip infringement, she’s going to help you work your way through that. This is the kind of service that you get from Karen Locker, that’s solutions for the number for e-commerce solutions for e-commerce dot com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got a forward slash momentum and you’re going to save $50 a month, 600 bucks a year by just clicking that link. She pays me. I don’t want to hide that. I never do. I’m always upfront about that, but it doesn’t cost you anything additional and you’re going to get that inventory health report. The only way you get that is through mind link the solutions, the number for e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum.
Speaker 2: [00:04:39] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson,
Stephen: [00:04:53] man. Oh Man, I love what I do. I love my podcast because I get to talk to people like our guest today. Welcome to e-commerce momentum podcast, episode 79, Mike Allston man. Oh Man. He got me kind of tingly a couple times in this conversation because he takes us to places that, you know, I don’t think most people were thinking this way. I mean, it’s just so common sense, right? I mean, if you sit, when you hear it, you’ll be like, oh yeah, Duh. But think about if you want to be an electrician, one of the things you have to do is study, you know, electronic, like tronics and you know, all the electrical stuff, but you have to go intern somewhere. You have to go and put in the hours, right? You have to meet the requirements. Well, guess what? If you want to be a good e-commerce seller, you could go work for somebody and learn on the job and invest and give them what you’re all, but you can fine tune it and to hear Mike say it and the benefits that he gets and the benefits they get, it’s just a wonderful, wonderful thing and man, I hope that opens up the eyes for others, um, in ways that you might not know where your path is going. Let’s get into the podcast.
Stephen: [00:06:08] All right, welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guest. I’m know what’s so cool for me is I love when your personal life and your business life and your extra curricular life. I mean there are multiple lives, all kinds of mingle together and meander together. Maybe that’s the best word is meander because I think that life fulfilled is interwoven and the really successful people I’ve seen have figured that out, that it’s not just one all the time. It’s not just the other. There are no clear lines and I don’t think that’s the way life is supposed to be. So welcome Michelson. Welcome Mike.
Speaker 3: [00:06:46] Thank you steven.
Stephen: [00:06:49] Think about that statement. What I just made is that, is that fair to get where I’m going with that?
Speaker 3: [00:06:54] I do and at my age I just turned 50 last year and so I think I’ve started to recognize slash accept certain things are the way they are. I don’t have all the answers, but I think that your interwoven comment is pretty accurate. I just, I just know that a lot of times, call it serendipity, call it fate, call it faith, whatever you choose to call it. I think that you, when you go out and you just do the very best you can, and especially with the intent of either not doing harm to someone else or trying to do good for someone else, certain things just happen that there’s no way you could have scheduled that ending out as completely as it has turned out. Starting from the beginning.
Stephen: [00:07:45] It’s almost like you have to let it happen, isn’t it? I mean, it’s like you’ve got to do your best kind of really do the best at whatever it is. You know. I had a friend who used to say if I had to clean bathrooms, Steve, I be the best. That bathroom would be the best it could be because I’m not going to give anything less. And then magically this stuff kind of falls your way. That’s my experience.
Speaker 3: [00:08:06] In fact, cleaning bathrooms was part of my early, early part before I came to Las Vegas. And um, some family had owned a large, a window covering organization. I owned a cleaning company, we clean bathrooms and one of the comments that was made to me was by a man who created the first credit card modem, his name was Dave Spafford and he lives in Salt Lake City area. And I asked him, I said, so dave, as my little team of girls and myself are cleaning some of these high end homes, what’s the best thing that I could do in making my business? And he said, first of all, Mike, you got to get the rag out of your hand. And basically gave me some business advice on. Yeah, if you want to do well, you’ve got to manage more than new. And that was one of the things that, yeah, serendipitously just kind of really did kind of kickstart me on my way. That was over 30 years ago into kind of winding up where I am today.
Stephen: [00:09:04] So let’s go back though, did you feel that Vegas was, you know, 30 years ago, this is it. I’m going to vegas and I’m going to be a, you know, in the world. Of course not right. Obviously. What will you do when you were in high school? What were you thinking?
Speaker 3: [00:09:21] In High School? I was similar kid. A lot of kids are that have some athletic talent. I played baseball in college and football in junior college as well as baseball, so I thought I was going to be an athlete until I got to that division one level and I realized, holy cow, I’m not going to make a living doing this. How much were you then then that Division One? Um, my high school graduating class was a hundred and 50 and my division one English class was over a thousand. And so yeah, it was, it was a big jump in while I was quote unquote good and there was hustle involved there. I knew that I did not want to sacrifice 10 years to get a possible shot. My Dad was a professional athlete, so I was familiar with the game. It just wasn’t something that interested me and I didn’t have the drive and desire to put the work and effort into being getting to the next level, which at that level, that’s what it is. It’s all. A lot of guys have very, very similar talent. It’s extremely high talent and there’s a very small margin of difference and it usually comes down to work ethic.
Stephen: [00:10:29] So go back to your dad. I mean, so you saw the sacrifices that he made to have that, right? Is that, is that part of the reason you didn’t want to do it?
Speaker 3: [00:10:39] Yeah, it was a little bit. He wasn’t a, a phenomenal athlete. He played football in the Canadian football league and he was, uh, in his day, pretty good, uh, and he could have made a living doing it. He chose something similar, but because of a bunch of friends and their organizations, I was able to travel, for example, to Denver Bronco Stadium visit with the San Diego chargers. My friend, a good friend of mine who’s passed away a few years ago was a defensive back coach for the San Diego chargers. Uh, his name was Jim Wagstaff, so I got to be around the locker rooms. I got to be amongst a lot of these types of people, Chuck Muncie, um, and Dan fouts and these are some older football players and so I was familiar with what the life was like and it didn’t interest me the money, but the lifestyle did not interested in.
Stephen: [00:11:28] Well, that’s interesting. So thinking about that, the gentleman that you’re mentioning, I assume are leaders or people that you admire and look up to or the ones you wouldn’t associate yourself with. How different was the environment from them? Because I, what I would think of, like I’ve read some of the books that some of these coaches have written and some of them are like, oh my goodness. I mean these are true leaders. I mean, and, and trying to build character and all that kind of jazz. Yet however, having seen some baseball behind the scenes or having seen some of the news stories about football specifically, um, there’s, there’s an element working against that. And you could go either way, you know, if you’re susceptible to me that’s not attractive. I don’t want to be around that kind of thing. The leadership’s heart is cool, but that if there’s an element I want out
Speaker 3: [00:12:19] that’s pretty correct and we’re able to be associated with. I was associated with. They in confidence would say, Mike, unless you have a god given talent, and I knew some. I know a lot of professional athletes and there are quite a few who do it for the money. They do it because, listen, this is my job. I don’t want to talk about sports when I’m not here. I just want to go home and most of us are very similar and they understood the trappings and the things that could entice a person to go in a different way than they might socially, religiously or politically believed, but yet you’ve kinda got to walk this fine line to make the kind of money to support your family and to support the things you need to do because that’s just what’s required to do. It’s not necessarily faking it.
Speaker 3: [00:13:07] You just have to do the best you can, but many coaches have witnessed what it can suck you into unless you’re extremely strong in character and you know what you’re doing and can put off the onslaught of the negative stuff that comes with fame and fortune and it just wasn’t. I was totally happy having experiences and coaching little league baseball and doing these things. I didn’t have to have things and the things that would be necessary to have that big dollar a paycheck in order to have those things. It just, it wasn’t me. It’s very mature
Stephen: [00:13:41] to be thinking like that though at that age. That’s a good upbringing. Your dad and mom sounds like they instilled some values and because that’s tough. I mean, you know, especially in the way we idolize athletes or rockstars and things like that, you know, we idolize them. I just, I was somewhere and there was somebody famous or something and it just fascinates me how people, including myself, migrate over to see them. You know, it’s like they’re somebody special and yet, you know, and I guess in some ways they could be in that little piece of it, but that doesn’t build the whole person. I don’t know. It just. That’s cool that you figured that out at a young age. Very, very mature. I’m not so sure I would have been as mature. I don’t have any money talent, so I don’t know. Interesting. OK, so you decide what, what are you going to do then?
Speaker 3: [00:14:33] The first couple of years out of college I wanted to own my own independent insurance agency. This was during an era where you could own your own book of business and be your own person and so some of my family members were in. I was trying to get into it but. But I think I missed the window because at that particular time one of the regulations that had just been altered was that banks could own insurance companies or could own their own book of business. So these family members, rather than being able to start now and build my book of business banks were coming in and buying, buying up these companies that had been independently established for so long and to go work for a prudential, which I did or go work for a beneficial life, which I did. Um, that I enjoyed the financial portion of it. I enjoyed understanding it.
Speaker 3: [00:15:27] I enjoyed it, but I didn’t enjoy going out and necessarily selling it. I was happy selling. I sold flies, fishing flies, you know, my first year of college I had a knee surgery, laid in bed and learn how to tie fishing flies and sell those things to a little convenience stores that I loved. The interaction of selling, completing a sale, moving onto the next one. So I was kind of hooked on entrepreneurial-ism early.