Shownotes
“Big company stuff” is what is negatively affecting today’s companies. Are you guilty of “One Day Seizures”? I am. I can pivot sometimes three or four times in a day. Could this be holding you back? Maybe you need to try Tommy’s Move: VIOLENT CHANGE IN DIRECTION!
Mentioned:
Sponsors
Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)
SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”
Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.
Amazon Accounting Podcast: Before we get into the chart of accounts we want to mention our course: AMZACCOUNTING SIMPLIFIED
WE CAN HELP YOU CREATE YOUR CUSTOM ACCOUNTING SYSTEM WITH QUICKBOOKS ONLINE AND MASTER YOUR AMAZON FINANCIALS
You’re overwhelmed with accounting software options and are afraid you’ll pick one that might limit you down the road.
You have no idea how to adjust your Amazon deposits for gross sales, refunds, and fees.
You’re confused about the difference between inventory and cost of goods sold not to mention how to track them.
You’ve invested so much time reading blog posts, downloading free accounting resources … now, you’re stuck on information overload AND still don’t know where to start! Then consider joining a program to help you build a foundation. One that can evolve with your business. One that can help you get control of your business once and for all.
Are you overwhelmed thinking about your business accounting? Do you not know where to start? That’s why we do this podcast. We want to help you the seller. Remember we are sellers too. After working with hundreds of clients we have we think the best simple chart of accounts you need to get your accounting system started. We have the answer…..
Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get your copy!
Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.
Tommy: [00:00:00] In my opinion, having built an Amazon Fba business and having worked in silicon valley and and having looked at how Internet companies grow. Yeah. If you look at the trajectory of Amazon, basic skews, right? The total number of things that they’re looking at, it’s increasing rapidly and I think that’s terrifying for Amazon sellers in general, but
Cool voice guy: [00:00:20] welcome to the commerce momentum podcast where we focused on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson,
Stephen: [00:00:34] so you’re looking for an advantage to help you with brand. Well, one of the tools that you can use a scope, you could check out their product and then check out their competitors and find the keywords that competitors for using and check out theirs and see that they’re not, and then say, okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me do this. Let me enhance your brand. That’s the thing you can bring to the marketplace. When you can hance the brand, you’re going to win that account, so try it. You get a free trial, but seller labs.com forward slash, scope, use the code omentum and save 50 bucks. It’s a free trial. Try it and see if you can enhance the brand. It’s time to get the listings right. So what should you do? You should get your images right, right. So amazing freedom has a program to help you do that.
Stephen: [00:01:16] And we’ve used them. It’s phenomenal what they can do. You gotta go look at this. So you go to amazing freedom.com, forward slash photos and take a look at the examples of what you can do with an image you take and you give them some sample images. Um, some simple images. And then what they do is they take and um, insert them with lifestyle photos. And so all of a sudden you’re going to see an example of what a plain image looks like and then what it can be enhanced to. Why is this of value to you while you’re in the wholesale business? And guess what? You want to add value to the brand. And this is just a simple way to do it. They offer all those kinds of services. Scroll down to the bottom. If you really want somebody to help really improve this service and you want to bring value to that brand because you want it exclusivity, the services that they offer for listing enhancement will blow your mind.
Stephen: [00:02:04] So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash photos, take a look at what you can do for your brand that you’re trying to get. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 392, Tommy Griffith. Um, great story. A very cool guy, a great background, you know, work in Seo for giant companies like paypal and then airbnb and historys. What what drew me into him is, you know, him creating a business and then, uh, after a bunch of non successful businesses he figured something out and he figured it out in a big way and it’s kind of driven his life, um, going forward. And some of his absolutes are pretty interesting to me. Some of the things that he’s talking about are just so common sense, but he didn’t learn them easily either. And I think that that’s the lesson is that none of this stuff is easy.
Stephen: [00:02:57] Um, he used a couple of phrases, never heard this one to thousand day principle to get to replace your income a thousand days. Never heard that rule with them, but at three years, it’s going to take you three years to replace your income. I get people that reach out to me all the time, Steve, I need to make six figures by Friday. Well, Tommy’s going to tell you that’s just not realistic. And so therefore you’re going to disappoint and then you’re going to give up and then you’ve got to walk away. But if you knew you had to get there in three years or a thousand days, then you might break it down differently. So I think solid advice from a solid guy. Um, great story and some, some real functional entrepreneurial advice. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guests.
Stephen: [00:03:38] It’s a different kind of guest, um, because he’s not a seller selling on Amazon, um, or selling on Ebay, although he’s got a big Ebay connection, uh, years ago. But I think the perspective he has working for big companies in the Seo field specifically definitely related to what we do, knows a lot about our business and went out on his own and I’m really interested to understand some of those things and how these big giant companies are making decisions without talking to us. Jeff Bezos never calls me. I’m always waiting for his call and yet they make changes and it affects me and so I think we were going to get some great perspective. I’m very excited about Tommy Griffith. Michael, welcome Tommy.
Tommy: [00:04:20] Steven, are you saying Jeff doesn’t call you? You never know. You know, I was going to give him a marital advice. I’m married 32 years. I could’ve helped them there, but he did not, man, I think just you. You would have benefited from that. He needed, he needed some help for a minute. Yeah. The grass is not greener. Jeff, do not.
Stephen: [00:04:36] I believe that the grass is not greener. It is not. Never so, but I think he’s done fairly well. What’s interesting about your story and then I’ll go right there because this, this was very interesting to me. You’re very not self deprecating, you’re very, your inward looking at your business compared to these other companies that started after you and they’re billion dollar companies and Tommy’s click minded companies. Not a billion dollar company yet. Is it?
Tommy: [00:05:03] It’s, you know, we’re, we’re almost there. No, no, that’s a good perspective to have. You’re almost there. Yeah, right. We’re almost there at 0.1% of the way there. No, um, yeah, no, no, we’re not. But yeah, I did an analysis on, I feel like I’ve succeeded. I felt like I succeeded and then I took a look back and realize there’s multiple billion dollar companies that were started after my business and kind of wrote all my emotions out, uh, in a blog post. Sort of describing the whole process. Yeah.
Stephen: [00:05:31] Failed. Because I think it’s really important for understand that, right? So here are a list of companies that were completed or that were created after click minded. Okay. So you were working on click money for eight years, and then all of a sudden these companies start lift 24 billion snapchat, 15 billion instacart, 7 billion Sophie, 4 billion all the way down to you, Udacity, while little dinky you Udacity, which I never even heard of 1 billion. And those are all by most imagination,
Tommy: [00:05:58] very incredibly successful. And then there’s Tommy’s click minded. So did you fail? I mean, did you think you failed and now you got past it? Is that kind of the point of the article? Yeah. Um, so the, yeah, the point of the article did a little context for your, for your listeners. Yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m an Seo guy, been doing digital marketing for 10 years. Um, I’ve managed search engine optimization to two big companies before this paypal and Airbnb, hence the, hence the Ebay connection, the paypal. Right, right. We were actually owned by Ebay at the time and they’ve, they’ve spun off sense. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I had actually, I had to kind of, you know, like probably a lot of your listeners and you as well had a number of entrepreneurial seizures. Um, you know, throughout my, like after, after leaving university and I, I was probably on click minded was probably an attempt number 10 or 15, if you can.
Tommy: [00:06:52] Um, yeah, I mean I was, I’m a pro at failing. You’re also a pro at launching ideas well, or did they make it to the launch phase or did they die before that? Usually, yeah. I mean every, every I like everyone was a little bit different and I had a cup, you know, one or two that I’ve worked on for six months to a year and a one or two that I’d worked on for a month. Um, sort of a lot of it stems, I’m not sure how familiar you are, your audience are with, you know, the four hour work week, Tim Ferriss style. Right? Yeah. And a lot of it stemmed from that, like getting to idea validation and all that. But um, yeah, the, the first bunch just kind of continue to fail over and over again. And then, uh, the one that seemed to hit, I was managing search engine optimization at paypal.
Tommy: [00:07:38] My boss had asked me to put together sort of an SEO training course for my colleagues. Um, I ended up doing it and that turned into teaching search engine search engine optimization to, uh, on the weekends to startups in San Francisco. And that was a physical class like teaching face to face. Um, the business. I enjoyed it a lot. I, I like teaching a lot, but the business model was terrible. I mean, absolutely terrible, but I ended up being kind of the right place, right time for the online course revolution that, that we’re sort of in. We’re kind of in an online course renaissance right now. And in 2012 it was just sort of right place, right time with you to me. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them. Yeah. Online course marketplace started with them and uh, it grew and grew and grew and grew. And you know, within a few years my side project was generating more revenue than my salary at an airbnb. So you blow, you glossed by those little dinky companies, paypal and Airbnb. Um, those of us who are, especially in this world, we, we, we tend to be entrepreneurs. So we tend to stay in airbnbs whenever we can for the right reasons, the reasons that they state what people are looking for. Right. Um, when you think about your opportunities there, how do you walk away from that? I, I understand
Stephen: [00:08:56] that the revenue got to be so high, but there’s something else. I mean, where do you work? Wow, I worked for paypal. That’s a big deal. Or I work for AIRBNB. How do you walk away from those? How do you get your ego in check? Is, is it because you hit half a million dollars in sales? I mean, is that what gets you there or is it because you can say you’re doing your own thing? I mean, you get what I’m asking. Yeah, I do.
Tommy: [00:09:17] Um, and it, and it was really hard. I mean, I gotta be frank. Like I would, I will, I will never have a better job than I did at Airbnb. It was, it, it was amazing. It was, I got to work on a really tough, hard, awesome problems that my colleagues were fantastic. And it was just, uh, it was, it just feels like, oh, you know, this is really drinking the Koolaid. And the founder says this all the time, and I am a, um, I’m a, I’m a pure Zombie mode and I’m drinking the Koolaid. But the, the founders all truly believe it’s a once in a generation company and I think they’re right. And so it was, um, it was incredible. But yeah, I was, I had always had the entrepreneurial itch and I, I would actually argue that because the company was so great that I stayed longer than, than I would’ve normally. Right. Interesting. And so I was sort of ready to go a few years earlier when I replaced my salary, but stayed there for a few more years because I sort of wasn’t, wasn’t...