Shownotes
Jason aka “Prof Sales” on Youtube has a pretty typical story. Went to school, got a corporate job and chose to leave. I see this more and more in our world. There is more to life and I get so excited that more people are figuring it out. Great story about figuring it out and finding “it”!
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] Want to jump in here and just bring back up episode 250 Toys for Tots campaign put together by Sellar lambs. It is such a great opportunity. I was with the seller on Friday. Their team is working on it. I’m very very excited. This is a chance for you to use the skills that you personally have developed. You’ve got sourcing muscles not many other people have it. And this is a chance where we can take and use our skills to help those less fortunate. All the information is on episode 250 such a great cause. Give back give back give back this time of year thanks hope your Q4 is going good. It’s
Stephen: [00:00:40] a great time to be selling and sell a lot. Watch repressors. I just got whacked on one last$15 a unit. I didn’t lose I lost in profit because I showed a blocked one wasn’t paying attention so please do me tell you by a couple sponsors you a scope from solar labs. If you’re not using it to even just to take your wholesale accounts of course you got to use it for private label. Right. You need to understand the key word you want understand a key word go look at your competitors get their keywords and then use them. That’s smart business right because they already have proven that proof of concept but take the same approach to your wholesale accounts make sure that those keywords are in there. If not upload those changes many times you can but many times you can’t take advantage scope from Selover labs go to Silver labs dot com slash scope use the code word momentum save a few bucks get a few key words get your listings found.
Stephen: [00:01:35] Got to find that key word in scope will be the product that will help you there. Solutions for e-commerce Karen Locher. You know again you hear me talk about her because she is my account manager she’s been doing a great job. Again I had some stranded listings and I notice them down there on the bottom right hand corner. They’re gone. I look back and they’re gone and I see stuff submitted. I see stuff return. It’s such a great process because I don’t have to pay attention. I can pay attention to the other parts of our business solutions for e-commerce slash momentum. I’ll save you 50 bucks. Lowest price she offers.
Stephen: [00:02:08] And you still get the inventory Health Report. Take a look at it it’s set up for 2018 now. Take care and I sent you. When you think about Q4 lists and I hope you don’t use them just Q4 I hope you use them all year long again you want to learn how to fish right. And so the best thing to do when you’re buying a list is look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it and then figure that out on your own. That’s the approach that gay lesbian uses and a million dollar arbitrage list. It is closed for the rest of this year however I have asked them and they have said they would do it if there’s an opening. They will pull from the waitlist. OK so I have the link out on my site on this episode will have a link that will take you right on to the waitlist.
Stephen: [00:02:55] So get on the waitlist if there’s something that your interest members are going to give you a 7 day free trial so there’s nothing to lose. But then once you get in there take advantage learn how to fish right sharpen your to sharpen your skills I guess is the right phrase I should use. OK so again I have that link out on this episode. So jump out there and get on that list. You know go daddy and grasshopper are both national sponsors of the show. I’m very fortunate. I have a third one coming on in February very excited about that. But go daddy. I use them. This was somebody who had a great idea for and for a domain and I’m like. Use my link.
Stephen: [00:03:32] Save 30 percent 30 percent yes they pay me. We all know that. However 30 presents real I use it myself because I want to save the 30 percent. So it’s Try Go Daddy dot com slash momentum right. Try Go Daddy Dotcom’s slash momentum and you’re going to save 30 percent grasshopper’s the same deal. Try grasshopper dot com slash momentum and you’re going to save 50 bucks. I saw somebody else has signed up for it. The service makes you a professional. All of a sudden your business has a phone number has a vanity phone number you can kind of create your own one if it’s available but you don’t need a second phone. And I think that’s the big thing. It’s not Google Voice which is choppy Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. This is professional stuff. Press one for customer service press two for my Amazon account manager which would go to Charon’s team. I mean this is a great opportunity. So it’s Try grasshopper dot com slash momentum save fifty bucks.
Cool voice guy: [00:04:28] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum good guys. Well we focus on the people the products and the process of Commerce selling today.
Stephen: [00:04:37] Your host Steven Peters and welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 250 for Jason Sloan. So Jason goes by the youtube name prof’s sales and we get into why use is professor of sales which is what is short for. But he’s got a really interesting background. And what’s so cool to me is that he kind of figured out the parts that he wants to do on his terms and it’s kind of a neat place to get to because when you work for. And he was in retail and you’ll hear that story and you have opportunities and then you don’t agree with it. It gets to you. And so you really kind of want to do what you want to do and I hope more people do it. I mean I just I’m seeing more people doing because I’m interviewing them but I just hope more people figure out that there’s another way you get to choose. And I think Jason is a great example that let’s get into the podcast. All
Stephen: [00:05:35] right welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast are excited about today’s guest. He is a fellow content producer and I’ve been watching this stuff and I really enjoy it. And dude knows his stuff. Jason Sloan aka Prof. Sales on YouTube. Welcome Jason. Hey thanks for having me Steve. Glad to be here. I appreciate you coming on. I’ve been watching and I don’t know how I found you but somehow you come up and you know they’re smarter than us right. These Google guys and they know hey if he’s watching this type of video he’ll likely like this video. And you’ve been coming up a lot lately on YouTube for me and probably for a lot of other people. And so I’m interested to find out how you got started with YouTube. But first why profits sales. What does that mean.
Jason: [00:06:25] Well that long story short I used to be a professor. I used to teach at a local community college and it’s always been a passion of mine. So when I got into the reselling game and selling on e-bay and Amazon Craigslist I thought you know maybe I’ll start a YouTube channel and just talk about my experiences and so on. And in doing that I was like I don’t really want to use my exact name so I decided well what can I put together that will soar. You know capital-T what I do and who I am and who I’ve been who I want to be. So I combined the word professor. Shorten it down to process which I thought would be a little easier to spell though strangely enough it’s not sometimes for people. And then I thought you know and what am I talking about when talking about sales I’m talking about revenue.
Jason: [00:07:16] Talking about business I’m talking about being an entrepreneur. So putting those two together I thought would kind of generate a quick one two punch easy to understand name for you to that I could use this word you know my trademark and you know what my channel was about what I was going to talk about and that’s how I came up with it.
Stephen: [00:07:34] OK. It makes sense. I mean I immediately thought He’s a professor of sales right. He’s going to teach me sales. That is where I went but I didn’t think there was a story and I’m glad to know there is is there. So tell me what do you go to school for.
Jason: [00:07:47] Well I initially went to school for political science.
Stephen: [00:07:51] Oh that’s related to sales. I mean you know actually you know what a given given the political realm out there today that’s probably a pretty good one right for sale sign any kind of you could do both because you have to sell yourself so a line of whatever.
Jason: [00:08:07] Yeah once upon a time I was going to be a lawyer and you know life took me in a different direction for a lot of different reasons. And you know so a political science degree and a master’s degree in political science seem like a that’s a good course to go and then go into law school. And I did not go that direction. And you know it after I got out I really didn’t do anything specifically with that degree but it’s definitely helped me a lot of other ways.
Stephen: [00:08:37] So you’re going to be a lawyer. I mean was that I mean are you parents lawyers hers or what led you that way. No
Jason: [00:08:45] . My parents are not lawyers at all. They they actually worked a lot of years for the same company and not in that field at all. But when I was younger I loved to argue and argue in the sense that you know just trying to persuade someone trying to understand my own position better. So the law seemed like a reasonable course to use for that. So hey maybe I can get paid for arguing. That
Stephen: [00:09:13] sounds good. And you can use it to pick up girls too. That is a highlight as you get a little older. Well when I was a little younger that that might have been part of it at least some. Absolutely. I mean back then. I get it now. OK so you were going to go. You went to school and you got out with this degree and the starry eyed learned student said what did you go shovel snow or where do you go to work.
Jason: [00:09:39] Well I got married. So this was how it’s supposedly I know it just got serious. Totally different direction. Got married moved. Well basically staying in my hometown for a while ended up taking a sales job. Interestingly enough I had the opportunity to become a sheriff’s deputy and did not answer that. That would have been a totally different direction and probably in retrospect would have been a better direction at least at that time in my life. But I decided to go into the sales field which eventually led to retail management field as well. So
Jason: [00:10:18] I went off on a totally different direction I’m one of those I’m one of those three quarters of the people that gets their degree and then does not get a job in that field.
Stephen: [00:10:26] Well and I don’t know I mean I think I’m a poly side degree. It is valuable for I mean again it’s a communications right. That’s a lot of do. That’s valuable. Pretty much across any industry any more or less even government. I mean it really is. I would argue that that degree would be valuable no matter what. Versus a general business degree or even a history degree or a general history degree. If you’re not specific or even worse. My son was studying my youngest who’s to change his major. He was studying computer science. I mean the most generic computer science degree and I’m like that’s not going to get you anywhere. You’ve got to be a little more specific and he changed into digital media and now he’s booming all of a sudden is booming. So I think Polizei is actually a very good degree. However retail sales management that doesn’t sound fun.
Jason: [00:11:22] If it wasn’t maybe fun although there were periods of fun but I did learn a lot of things I learned a lot about business without going through that. What
Stephen: [00:11:32] a what what kind of company you want to say who was to be what kind of company.
Jason: [00:11:37] Well I worked for actually I don’t mind seeing the companies I worked for Kmart were about your half learning lesson there. Yeah sure was. He basically told me I don’t want to work for Kmart. But I did learn some things for sure. I learned some things about managing a leading people and about you know business in general and profit and loss statements and inventory and sourcing and things like that. And then I end up working for Gap for I guess about six years. Can
Stephen: [00:12:07] I have a question that came up before we go there. Before we go on because you know I know they’re struggling so how is it working in it. And it’s not like they’re new struggling isn’t bankrupt I think once or twice already.
Stephen: [00:12:18] So how is it leading a team when the company is so struggling How do you motivate people. How do you keep them on task.
Speaker 12: [00:12:27] Great. That’s a great question. And it was definitely something that I struggled to do as I relatively new well as a new manager leader. I didn’t have a lot of experience doing it. I found that the only thing that really you could use to motivate people was the sense of accomplishment within the team because the sense of accomplishment in terms of the big companies goals and what their expectations were was not realistic. And we weren’t we didn’t really have the resources to do it. So we had to come up with basically what it looked like. Success for us and our team I was a sauf lines manager which is the clothing and the Martha Stewart side of the store and all that stuff. And it was difficult for sure. You really had to kind of focus because there wasn’t a really good direction from above in them and the morale the the mood of the company was poor at that time and since gotten worse.
Stephen: [00:13:24] You know I think it has what has Have there been tools or are I guess just learning that you have that you’ve been able to bring into your own business now because you’re I think a one person operation. Am I correct.
Speaker 12: [00:13:37] Well someone Carna helps me a lot as well.
Stephen: [00:13:41] We get a little bit of help there but so how do you. I mean were there skill sets that you’ve learned there that can bring you through because you know let’s face it this is a lonely business. Yeah the it’s high and low. Every 10 minutes or so is the best thing. I just gave this talk the best business in the world I can’t believe it. And then five minutes later oh my god what did I do. Why didn’t I stay at my job. That’s the way it goes. Were there things there that that are kind of pushing you through now because you’ve seen it and you you’ve come through the other side of it.
Jason: [00:14:13] Yeah. You know one of the things that was really eye opening about Kmart was their distribution their inventory. For instance dealing with that getting into the floor marketing and merchandising it was a real struggle. So because we really didn’t have the resources to get it done that direction was not always clear. We were always we didn’t have the Skewes we were supposed to have. So
Stephen: [00:14:34] it really presented a lot of challenges because it’s just old and they haven’t updated and haven’t invested because they’re just trying to stay alive.
Speaker 12: [00:14:43] Well I think at that point this would have been in the late 90s. They’re their supply chain was broken. They were struggling to get product at a cheap enough price. They were having to borrow more and more money. And Wal-Mart was just kicking their butt all over the place and they were struggling to get product in the stores. And a lot of the private key men came in without much. We rarely get trucks that would have all the pieces back and a piece could be you know just one thing or to be a case of something we would get you know a couple of thousand pieces and you literally would not know what it...