Shownotes
Trent is clearly “The Process” guy. His systems have propelled his business 4X and likely 2.5X that again this year. Get ready to get back on track, get ready to get laser focused and grow grow grow. Wholesale takes consistency but cant you say that abut everything you want to be successful at?
Mentioned:
Trent’s Linkedin profile contact
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 it, 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 gay 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 know, 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, but a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is a mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom, [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 is amazing. Amazing. I’m in that group. So you’ll see me there. An 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, you know, 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 keywords 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 light 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 solar lamps.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 [inaudible] dot com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for ecommerce. Karen lunker. Great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time, I guess 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. Two thousand 18. Get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything. The basically, uh, you know, long term storage fees coming up. Guess what? She’ll evaluate, she’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, Yep, 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 ecommerce solutions. Four ecommerce.com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got to 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 ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum.
Speaker 2: [00:04:39] Welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of commerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:04:51] Yeah, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 200 and eighty one. Trent, Dear Smith. All right, I’m excited. I usually record these intros after, after doing the podcast interview, and man, I’m pumped, I’m jazzed because, you know, when you talk to somebody who’s just, who’s done so much, he’s very humble about it, but he’s done so much in such a short period of time. He’s really an old timer when it comes to internet and ecommerce and all the different things and they’ve each built on each other and it’s so cool that in the middle of the interview, maybe two thirds in, we get to a place where these three things that he’s mastered are all back in vogue today, you know, and that was like a man, the lights just went on for me and talking with him and he just seeing why he’s just so, uh, it’s, it’s almost like fluid for him and it’s a very cool thing and I just think that that’s, that’s a very cool place to get to Trent years. Men, man. Great. Great interview. Let’s get into the podcast. Oh, today’s guest, very seasoned podcaster, which I found out, which is very cool. I’m definitely, um, respect for that. Um, especially because he did it old school and not as easy as the software allows today, um, but a very longterm seller, um, who’s built several businesses, which I’m really interested, but he is a process guy and that’s what interests me more and I just am fascinated by a real, real skilled operator. Trent, Dear Smith, welcome Trent.
Speaker 3: [00:06:29] Steven, thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Stephen: [00:06:32] Pleasure to have you on. I’m very fortunate to have you on. You are a seasoned seller, podcast or marketer. This isn’t your first Rodeo, is it?
Speaker 3: [00:06:43] No, no, this is definitely not. Um, I became an entrepreneur in [inaudible] when I lived in Vancouver, BC or. Oh Dude, you’re old. I’m old dude. You right. Internet dude and Internet years. You’re almost like a founder. And Anyway, I sold that business, uh, in 2008. And while it was we did deliver our services online. Uh, it was an it support company. I really didn’t consider myself an internet marketer. I didn’t even know what that term was. A nurse. Were you a nerd or the marketing side? The business all. I was a sales guy back, I didn’t even know anything about marketing, to be honest with you. I grew up in sales business to business sales and I’ve done very, very well at it. And so I thought to myself, well, I want to create a business. And I knew a guy who, who knew like servers and networks and backup systems and all the crap that I didn’t know anything about, but I thought, well, you know, if you can deliver the services, I can sell it.
Speaker 3: [00:07:44] And we spent the next eight years a growing a multimillion dollar business that was ranked as a profit 100 company in Canada. And in Oa, he and I didn’t really like each other much anymore. And uh, so we decided to part ways and uh, with the company was sold for just over a million bucks and that was more money than I own most of it. And that was more money than I’d seen ever. And I took that opportunity to move from Seattle where I was living at the time down to San Diego to enjoy a mini retirement. And it was in the midst of that mini retirement completely by accident that I met my first Internet marketer. I was a girl by the name of Haley. We met surfing and that’s another whole long story. But the long and the short of it is, is she kind of told me what she did and I was like, well, that’s fascinating. You mean to tell me you, you make money passively while you’re not working? And she said, yeah. And she was making quite a bit. And I became very, very fascinated. And so I set out to do exactly the same.
Stephen: [00:08:44] You’re a face to face sales guy with business to business. That’s, that’s door to door, that’s, you know, sitting down, comfortable having a few drinks. How do you just turn that to internet where it’s all the screen.
Speaker 3: [00:08:57] Because as a business owner, I’m in the prior business, while we still had to go face to face, I had started to kind of grow tired of them. Have a business model where I either had to be the only sales guy or I had to hire a really expensive salespeople because affordable salespeople are affordable because they suck. And so I thought, you know, I don’t want to be the bottleneck of the growth of my company anymore and so I needed a way that I could generate revenue without being the only guy who could close a deal. And so when I discovered thanks to this girl Hailey, that you know, well, you know, if you become an Amazon of fixed, she was an affiliate marketer and I didn’t even know what that was, but when I got it figured out pretty quickly and when I discovered that she was working an hour a day making 200 grand a year and I was like, wow, I’m going to get into some of that.
Speaker 3: [00:09:55] Like it’s surf a lot more with that. Yeah. And I like riding dirt bikes and you know, going out and having fun and so forth. So it wasn’t a, it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing to make me think that that’s what I should do. Now in hindsight, that first business model was laughable. Maybe we’ll get into the reasons why that was a really crappy business model, but it was, I got my phd in Internet marketing over a period of about 18 months and that set me on an entirely new course in life and I’ve obviously been fortunate enough to experience all sorts of good things as a result of that, that change in my career trajectory trajectory.
Stephen: [00:10:33] When you think about career choices, um, and then the training involved in them, um, this is been a pretty good ride for you. I would agree that you got the best education and, and so you had to eat dirt. Gary vee would say it a little more colorful than that, but you had to eat a bunch of junk for a while, especially when it dissolves. Right? And it turns without your control. But, but thinking about that, I mean, again, because I’m basically saying is, you know, this is probably the fastest way to learn the best opportunity that there was. I guess that’s the way you could have went to college and went through it and all the rest of that gesture. It wouldn’t help you in one bit. Um, you can go from marketing. I, my masters is in marketing. Wouldn’t help you one bit that what you went through when I look at the really successful people that are marketing products, which is really what you have to do today, right? Is it, we’re past the point of just putting everything up on Amazon and everything sells. That’s gone, right? Those days are gone because guess what, everybody else does the same thing you do so that you have to have special sauce. You have to get past Amazon, right? As we all know. And you have to have that ability. You got that at a really opportune time. Um, to me, I just wonder what else could you have done that would give you this opportunity?
Speaker 3: [00:11:48] Yeah, I don’t, I don’t really think anything. I mean, when I looked back, I started building micro niche sites which were basically sites designed to take advantage of a loophole in the Google Algorithm which no longer exists and assembled caneously started blogging because it occurred to me that that would also be something that was a good way to learn stuff. And I, I started podcasting almost immediately because you know, anyone who runs a podcast like you and I know is that it’s the best way to get a free education is to use a podcast to allow yourself to interview other smart people in high. In hindsight, I don’t, I don’t know that there would’ve been a better way to, of those things are current though. Think about that, right? There’s some company that wants to interview me for something for a. they’re asking about podcasting for products, you know, what or how do you get to consumers?
Speaker 3: [00:12:37] And of course podcasting is a way, um, but micro niche sites, we’re back to that landing page site right now to get your product founder, the other resident, right? Were there with all those things that you’re talking about, it’s come full circle. And to me it’s very cool and very few people that had the fortunate. I’m fortunate, I don’t know what the right word is to get to that place. And I would say you’re a good example of it. When I look at the really successful marketers, they have all had a very similar path. I’ve had a whole bunch of people on that have been killed by google that had a huge income built up this thing, learn this skill set trade, and then had to turn on a dime. Let’s talk about that. Because where were you at that? Well, let’s go through the paint.
Speaker 3: [00:13:20] You know, the other pain that I want to talk about is you and your partner split up because, you know, it was roses and Unicorns to start. How long in seven years did it take to get to that place where you guys knew that it probably wouldn’t have, wouldn’t continue. So that business was funded entirely by me. Um, he was an employee with a paycheck from day one and I gave him stock in the company. And I said to him in the beginning, I said, you know, one day this thing is going to start making some money and I want you to not forget that you got paid from day one and you never had to put a diamond risk. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. No problem. I’ll never forget that. Well, memories are short. And by year five we were starting to make money.
Speaker 3: [00:14:04] And so I took that opportunity to start to increase my income, to compensate myself for all the risks that I’ve taken in those five years. And he didn’t get a raise in his paycheck at that point in time. And he was not capable of understanding why I should be paid any more than him. He says, well, we work the same amount of hours, and he had come from an he proofread previously. He was paid by the hour in his previous job. So his mindset was, well, if you work hard and you work the same amount of hours, therefore we should get the same pay. And what he failed to understand is that not not all job roles are created equal. Not all people’s skills are valued equally in the marketplace. He was a fantastic account manager, but I was the rainmaker. I am the guy that created the business model.
Speaker 3: [00:14:56] I’m the guy that financed it. I’m the guy that landed all the big clients without me. There was going to be no company and he couldn’t understand that. And so of course I’m to use a metaphor, um, he just, well not a metaphor, he just became very bitter at that five year mark when my income started to go up and his didn’t. And uh, that I don’t think that I possessed the relationship skills in hindsight. I know I didn’t possess the relationship skills that were necessary to smooth that over. And so I just steamrolled him. Do you think that would have been the way to fix it or is there now you’re the process guy, is there a way that you would approach it differently? You know, uh, an agreement or something like that? Yeah, we had a shareholder’s agreement, but we didn’t have an operating agreement.
Speaker 3: [00:15:48] And an operating agreement is the agreement that defines your roles as employees. The shareholder agreement is the agreement that defines your partnership as shareholders. They’re very different agreements and we just simply didn’t have the other one, so there was no basis for how to agree on...