Shownotes
How true the title of this episode is for many people in corporate America today. The “24hr 7 day a week” responsibility is taking an affect on people. They can’t turn off their cell phones but yet struggle to get a raise. They are lucky they have a job after all! Well Taurin is an early adopter of what is coming. There is a tidal wave of people saying “PASS”! Waling away is always an option. Just ask Taurin.
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] They want to jump in here and just bring back up episode 250 Toys for Tots campaign put together by or 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.
Stephen: [00:00:21] 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. Kip back. Give back give back. This time of year. Thanks Offut because I shared a blocked one wasn’t paying attention. So please do me tell you by couple sponsors in scope from Sellar labs. If you’re not using it to even just to take your wholesale accounts of course you’ve got to use it for private label right. You need to understand the keyword you want to understand a keyword. Go look at your competitors get their keywords and then use them. That 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.
Stephen: [00:01:07] If not upload those changes many times you can but many times you can take advantage scoped from seller labs. Go to Celebes dot com slash scope use the code word momentum save a few bucks get a few keywords get your listings found. Got to find that keyword and scope will be the product that will help you. Their solutions for e-commerce. Karen laager 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 the other parts of our business solutions for e-commerce slash momentum will save you 50 bucks.
Stephen: [00:01:54] Lowest Price she offers. And you still get the inventory Health Report. Take a look at a setup for 2008. Now tell Karen 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 the 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 Gala’s B uses in 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 wait list.
Stephen: [00:02:33] OK so I have the link out on my site. On this episode that will have a link that will take you right onto the wait list. So get on the wait list if there’s something that you’re interested members you’re going to give you a seven day free trial. So there’s nothing to lose but once you get in there take advantage. Learn how to fish right sharpen your tool 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 with somebody who had a great idea for and for a domain and I’m like.
Stephen: [00:03:19] Use my link save 30 percent 30 percent Yes they pay me. We all know that. However 30 percent is 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 dot com slash momentum and you’re going to save 30 percent grasshopper’s the same deal. Try grasshopper dot com slash momentum and you’re gonna save 50 bucks. I saw somebody else just 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.
Stephen: [00:04:01] This is professional stuff. Press 1 for customer service press 2 for my Amazon account manager which we go to Karen’s team I mean this is a great opportunity. So it’s try grasshopper dot com slash momentum save 50 bucks.
Cool voice guy: [00:04:16] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum blog where we focus on the people the products and the process of being e-commerce selling today. Here is your host Stephen Peters then welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast.
Stephen: [00:04:32] This is episode 258 Tauren relevance. What a great story. Torin has. I just appreciate I appreciate the choices. I think everybody has to make choices in their lives and I get so inspired when I see a young guy who makes really good choices for his life for his family for everyone. That’s the key. And I hope that I well I guess I can say that I’m seeing more and more people do it and this unbelievable business of Amazon and e-commerce and eBay and Mirch or Amazon and Etsy and I just saw somebody else killed it with that. This is allowing us it’s allowing the ordinary guy to break free and start a business without having to go. Millions of dollars in debt without having to go get financing without having to go get underwritten and go and beg and plead and get rejected.
Stephen: [00:05:27] You don’t want to do that and towards a great example of what can be. Now I understand he was almost forced but he played his cards. It wasn’t like he I mean he had the choice. That’s the key. You all have a choice. So get there. And he explains how he does that. Let’s get into the podcast. All
Stephen: [00:05:47] right welcome back to the conversation in a podcast very excited about today’s guest as he is an example of life changing outside of your control and then making choices based on it. And I think that’s such a powerful thing for a young guy and he’s young relative to me. Think I have a son older than him and I just think that the perspective that Toren introduced toward Bell events offers I think is so important for everyone today. So welcome Tauran.
Taurin: [00:06:20] Hey Stephen how are you man. I’m good yeah. You are good aren’t you. I’m all right.
Stephen: [00:06:27] That’s a pretty cool thing to say because last time you and I chatted which I think we were in Providence wasn’t it. No
Stephen: [00:06:33] we were in Denver. Oh my God this is how crazy my life is. I have no clue where I am. I mean literally you know I think I have three Vegas trips already booked for this coming. It’s crazy.
Stephen: [00:06:43] OK so we were in Denver and we were talking about I guess it’s just a kind of a crazy situation you were in. Right I mean you think about today companies today. It’s so hard to find talent. Right. I mean the unemployment rate is so low. So when you find talent you have to do everything to hold on them. Right I mean it’s just so challenging to keep good people and yet you were working for kind of an unusual company is that fair.
Taurin: [00:07:15] Yeah that’s a pretty nice way of saying a little polite know.
Taurin: [00:07:21] Yes. So I was working in electronics recycling and yes at resale for would be seven years I think today. But I left a couple of months ago and very small company. I was there pretty much from the inception and were kind of like a family. So it was a sad end but it was a choice that at a point I knew that I had to make things got a little rough and well just say it wasn’t once. It wasn’t what it what it once was and it became sort of a negative place to work. And I really didn’t need that in my life especially after you know selling on Amazon for three years and having established myself there I didn’t need the income either. So I made the choice and I do not regret for a second.
Stephen: [00:08:21] You know it’s funny when you get into that position where you have I don’t want to it’s not PC to say but kind of a few months right. I mean it’s you have a plan. Let’s say the professional way. You don’t have a plan. I mean first off how many of your friends have a side hustle that generate the kind of revenue you were generating right. How many of them have a true plan in their life. In my life very very few. Now generationally your generation is more likely to have than mine. But in thinking about your circle of friends how many of them have a real plan in case so they could walk away.
Taurin: [00:09:00] I think I’ve got more friends with no plan than I do with a plant.
Stephen: [00:09:04] Really. They’re just running in circles.
Speaker 11: [00:09:07] Yeah I mean either you know not focused on a career or not in a career at all and just kind of meandering through life flow. Yeah.
Taurin: [00:09:21] I mean I mean I got I’ve got friends sell on Amazon but a lot of them that’s their that’s their plan. They don’t have a job or they left their job long ago. It’s a nice comfortable place to be and I think that’s why I had such a problem leaving was because I had grown very accustomed to the two incomes and that felt like a very safe place to be because I knew that regardless of what happened to one I would still have the other.
Stephen: [00:09:50] It is very very real. What you’re describing because I walked away from a very large paying job and so now you you pull back and it’s like I could take chances. I didn’t have to worry about it. Now I have to be a little more thoughtful and mindful. But guess what. That’s not a bad thing because you make better choice. You know I would put words in my mouth for you is making better choices. So because airfare for you too.
Taurin: [00:10:19] Yeah and I mean I’m sure we’ll get into this. But the thing that really launched me into a side hustle and got me focused intent was Dave Ramsey. We went through we were married four years ago and somebody gifted us Steve Ramsey’s Financial Peace University kit and I took the class and I realized that my beautiful young bride came with a price tag of about 80000 dollars and the former student loans and a car loan.
Speaker 12: [00:10:49] That’s like a dowry that you’ve got to pay your reverse dowry. Hey that’s fair.
Taurin: [00:10:57] Yeah. Now we put all those numbers together sitting at the coffee table. I will never forget that feeling that weight on my shoulders. You know that Tingley mouth anxiety sensation that hit hard.
Stephen: [00:11:12] And what did you do for your relationship though. I mean because that’s important. I think that’s really important.
Taurin: [00:11:17] You did you know this going in well I had never really considered it. My parents paid for school. I was very fortunate there. And I had I took out one loan. My mom said if I wanted to study abroad for a semester I would have to pay for that. I took it out and it was it was a short trip it was about a month in Costa Rica which was awesome. And it was a small loan. And I remember making the pump monthly payments and there were there are tiny. It wasn’t a big loan but I just wanted that out of my life and I just one month I decided to save up and just pay it off and that’s what I did. And I guess I never really considered how big the student loans could be.
Stephen: [00:12:05] 80 grands a lot of money did and they put it on like a 30 year amortization. So you’re paying it like you’re paying your house.
Taurin: [00:12:13] The biggest one was nine point six percent to McCosh. Was even the minimum the minimum. So I think we’re over a grand a month. We started out.
Stephen: [00:12:24] And how does a small how does a young family starting out really get anywhere when you’re sitting on those kind of payments. Well let me ask you this if you’re maybe maybe because you’re your college was paid for. Is it kind of an absolute going forward if you have kids and you know I’m putting this way out there and to think about it logically is this one of those things that you’re doing to hopefully tell them absolutely no student loans there’s a way to pay for it. Let’s figure it out together whatever it takes.
Taurin: [00:12:55] Yeah I mean that starts now with 529 saving for their college and then hopefully giving them enough. And just you know pushing them sort of in the direction of a state school or something to that regard just to achieve perform education that the more expensive schools really don’t offer anything that the state schools and community colleges don’t.
Stephen: [00:13:21] Well I agree. Unless it’s a you know a lead into you know Harvard and MIT or what are those. I absolutely agree. Right
Taurin: [00:13:29] . And even still I mean I my my major oddly enough was entrepreneurship and it was really just because I wanted to general business degree and it seemed cool. And only recently have I become begun to realize I do have an entrepreneurial bent to me. But I mean had I known what my trajectory looked like ahead of time I wouldn’t have gone to college because I feel like I must are going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something very specific I learn on YouTube I learn from books. I teach myself whatever I’m focused on and intent on learning. I’m a rabid consumer of information so I’m going to learn a lot more on my own than I will in a classroom setting that’s just me personally but it’s something you’re interested in. You’re
Stephen: [00:14:15] going to give it your all right I mean just listen to somebody talk about Montessori where they basically kind of say hey here are these all options over here. You know you kind of figure out which ones you like and then in theory the kids who are artists or businesspeople they gravitate towards what they like.
Speaker 13: [00:14:32] And all of a sudden they get enthusiastic and there’s a passion that help they helped fuel that model. Now for college forget who it was who I know Gary Vee’s involved in it. There
Stephen: [00:14:44] is a group of them the guy from pencils for promise. They were putting Adam I can’t think of his last name. They were putting together some type of education because like Google for example does not require a four year degree anymore because they realize what you’re saying is that most of that is nonsense. They need you to be able to code or whatever it is that they need. But however there are certain skill sets they want you to have. And so they have this college where you can actually go for free and then you agree to pay back like 15 grand a year for three years or some story and then you help fund other kids to go for free. Right. But the premises is that you’re going to learn the tools that are needed to work at Google or Facebook or in your media or whatever. Right. I mean wouldn’t that. I mean think back to your degree did that biology class help you today. Running your Amazon business.
Speaker 12: [00:15:32] I use my biology knowledge every day that’s getting up to go to the bathroom and all that kind of stuff. But I’m talking about in business you know unless you know unless you’re selling in the one category.
Stephen: [00:15:44] But it’s just interesting. Now you know in fairness learning social skills that’s important. Right. I mean learning how to deal with people because