Shownotes
Rich (and Nila) have been helping others and allowing others to help him learn (just as much) how to sell on Ebay. He credits that group learning and their monthly meeting in helping them collectively grow their businesses. Would joining a meetup help you get consistency in your business? Would joining a meetup help you get accountability in your business?
Would joining a meetup help you gain a partner in your business? Spend the $3.00 and find out.
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] And know this is episode [2:49] 49 to 50 is coming and it is a give back episodes so get ready for the next episode 250. Hope your Q4 is going good. It’s a great time to be selling and sell a lot. Watch your 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 about a couple sponsors you know 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 a private label. Right you need to understand the key word you want to understand a keyword. 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.
Stephen: [00:00:45] 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 sculped from Selar labs. Go to Sellar labs dot com slash scope use the code word momentum save a few bucks get a few key words get your listings found. Got to find that keyword 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 noticed 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.
Stephen: [00:01:26] 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 will save you 50 bucks. Lowest price she offers and you still get the inventory Health Report. Take a look at it set up for 2018. Now tell Karen I sent you. When you think about Q4 lists and I hope you don’t use them just Q4 for 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 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.
Stephen: [00:02:14] They will pull from the waitlist. 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 waitlist. 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 tool you know 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.
Stephen: [00:02:54] But go daddy. I use them. This is somebody who had a great idea for and for a domain and I’m like. Use my link saved 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 let’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 going to 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.
Stephen: [00:03:38] 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. I mean this is a great opportunity. So it’s Try grasshopper dot com slash momentum save fifty bucks. Welcome
Cool voice guy: [00:03:59] to the e-commerce momentum good guys. Well we focus on the people the products and the process of Commerce today. Your host Stephen Peters and welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast.
Stephen: [00:04:14] This is episode [2:49] rich Psylocke. I really enjoy talking with Rich because he has reinvented himself and what I love about what Rich says is he has used the knowledge he has gained for others in leading group discussions to advance his business. Again he’s teaching yet learning. Think about that. It’s the best proof of concept or you get a group of people are going to improve on your ideas. How many times has that happened to you. Well enriches world that’s happened a lot. Love is a concept not the fact that he’s been doing it for so long. And I think that that consistency I think we all would agree. Consistency is the key. And Rich and his wife Nolla are just great proof for that. Let’s get into the podcast. All
Stephen: [00:05:01] right welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast very excited about today’s guest. Actually I’m excited about two things. First time I’m recording in my warehouse and so hopefully we’ll have good audio quality and the guests that I have on it has more experience than me and my friends and the rest of us all combined. He’s been selling a longtime rich Psylocke. How they do in the name rich.
Rich: [00:05:26] Right. You got it perfect sir.
Stephen: [00:05:27] OK. I was concerned about that. I want to make sure I don’t mess that up. Now Welcome Rich has been a longtime seller a certified eBay trade education specialist which is a pretty cool title and has a retail brick and mortar business. I mean you’ve got a lot of things going on. Rich
Rich: [00:05:51] yes we do this myself my wife did run this and when you say retail we’re we’re still homebase.
Rich: [00:06:00] But it is a commercial site business so that there is a lot of things that go on and in our business. Things change in a in a minute when it comes to something that has to be made or done.
Rich: [00:06:17] I have some commercial real estate companies that I deal with and they need something done rather quickly working on a project right now. But I got the email yesterday and they needed my remarks. So these are not something very small either four by four sheets that have to be made four foot by four foot so they’re rather large. So it’s a pretty good project but that’s how we jump in our business. I
Stephen: [00:06:43] mean do you actually do some of the printing still in-house yourself.
Rich: [00:06:46] Well what we we are a vinyl cutting business and commercial line where we don’t do the actual printing of particular things although we do banners we have wholesale suppliers that do our that are that do are also printing banners and so forth. Matter of fact I got one right now that I’m working on too. So yeah but the whole cutting is is our main niche of what we do. We
Speaker 8: [00:07:11] haven’t gotten into the commercial printing end of it so but you you cut it and then you apply it to whatever type of metal or plastic or something else or to the side of cars or trucks or whatever that is that is correct.
Rich: [00:07:24] And that’s that’s a huge part of our business. And what we do in the in the e-commerce world is we actually manufacture that ready to apply so that the customer actually will get that item what we call mask and ready to apply so they can put it on whatever they want to whether it be a truck a car van a boat whatever whatever it is.
Speaker 8: [00:07:49] You know I was thinking about this as I was driving over to the city to be a pest a real estate office and who I’m using for some commercial leasing and I thought huh there’s a role. Somebody who’s in real estate. I’ve seen a bunch of people post about that. They’re either in real estate or thought about getting into it. And I thought boy that’s so complimentary to our e-commerce business in many ways. If you have a warehouse where if you’re dealing with real manufacturers or distributors you know love to meet those guys because I will not distribute their product right or no. And so I thought about your business. And it’s so complimentary and I’m sure it wasn’t always that way. Well let me ask this. Was Ebay would you say that eBay was could have been the saving grace of your business.
Rich: [00:08:40] Oh yes. When the recession hit and I’m going back to you know in any industry like ours the recession starts long before it really hits the real pocketbook of absolutely regular people. So when when we started noticing that we weren’t getting the commercial calls and even to this day right now you see a lot of retail places that are empty and you don’t see many mom and pop shops just opening up in the retail centers and I’m not blaming that on e-commerce. I’m blaming that on a lot of the rights that the the people have to charge. And I think there’s a big fear of people going into retail and and also it’s franchisees. Oh right. When we saw that coming in I’m going to go back to I’m going to say 2007 actually 2008 somewhere in that area. We just were getting calls that we needed to to do and I’ve been in my chamber for almost 25 years and we’re going to events and I’m not getting work or business I’m it’s starting to get a little bit nervous so when what we did is we had started selling on Ebay in 2001.
Rich: [00:09:50] When we opened up our first things to sell and try to you we didn’t have very good success so once we started selling things here and there are long to wait until that recessionary or whatever. What we really want a little bit more go into the into the e-bay area and and it it really it helps immensely. I mean and back then we weren’t doing the ready to apply products as much as we were doing personalized signs and just kind of some funny stuff that we saw on ebay. We’ve got a bunch of different types of things that we sell for buyer signs and things like that and all custom personalized with a person’s name or whatever around it.
Rich: [00:10:32] So that’s what we really pushed and we were we were doing fantastic with that. But as you know competition comes in for change changes your world.
Speaker 8: [00:10:42] But if you didn’t have that option. I mean you know I think about your situation and I think about how many other retail this I mean you help bring people in to learn how to do. That’s one of your things right. But can you imagine if you didn’t have that. You know what. What other options would you have had you might have had to geographically expand and go further out and take it away from your business and your family and the rest of that stuff. So to me what you were kind of a pioneer in and taking your business to the e-commerce world without doing your own web site without trying to drive your own traffic without all that you took advantage of what eBay had the best of what eBay had to offer. And you were able to apply it and I applaud you and I imagine that the conversations you have with other members of your chamber of commerce kind of go like this.
Speaker 8: [00:11:33] Hey you should consider adding e-bay or I guess now Amazon to to your business model. You could do much better. Is that correct.
Rich: [00:11:42] Yeah. Well it’s kind of funny you mention that because I’m I’m very close friends with another company that I told you that just printing for us and they’re you know I never been into this understanding where people won’t talk to other side companies or they won’t talk to bankers or whatever. When we have networking events or whatever they kind of shy away from all that we’re we’ve always made friends with most design companies because they can compliment you with things that you do that they may not be able to do. And we share things all the time. Two of our best friends I just came there just a few minutes to pick up the banner I was talking about. And you know so you are complementing that and late to this day will refuse to do anything e-commerce although I showed him how to sell a bunch of his collectibles but he refuses to do any of the e-commerce world.
Rich: [00:12:34] And as he talked about training and things I’ve got several success stories. A friend of mine that all a forklift leasing company and repair property he went and really wanted to figure out how we could start promoting his forklifts and e-bay and. And I’m like well you know what you’re really missing is is the used parts part. Yeah for sure of your product so many years ago and his brothers were just like I’m totally against this world and he was quite younger and he said you know I want to do something with this and see what we could do with some of these things and go and boy he does. He just took that and drove that amazing numbers that they were doing by taking little parts up with these you know particular forklifts that he had and you know his everything advances the old parts are harder to get right you know.
Rich: [00:13:34] Right. So you need somebody to supply those old parts whether they be used or new. And he just he just went crazy with it and to this day whenever I see him he’s always telling me about how how great you’re are doing but I worked with him for probably three years. And in that business I could tell you the brothers were in their offices and they didn’t want to have anything to do with it but they probably feel pretty good about it now.
Stephen: [00:13:59] Yeah. Well
Rich: [00:14:00] they did actually they were poor more closer to retirement. So they didn’t want to get anything new on whatever and he totally rebranded the cut rebranded the company and and changed the whole company around. So it’s it’s been a great thing but that’s just one of the stories. I mean that I can talk about when you work with somebody is really gone you know wants to move forward.
Speaker 8: [00:14:21] They learned pretty quickly after they have a few sales that hey this is something I’ve got Don’t you know the thing that gets me is what other option did he have. Right. I mean you know they could have just chose me you know you’re right the world is going away it’s only just e-commerce. We’re not going to make it. And just be resigned to that as opposed to branching out. And I mean let’s face it it’s probably exciting. You know especially the first sale. We all know what that’s like. That’s very rewarding right. You you did the work you put your head down you hoped and it actually happens. That’s pretty cool.
Rich: [00:14:58] Yeah. Well actually what they were doing and then is is basically auctioning off all of the used equipment you know pennies on the dollar. Exactly. Pennies on the dollar. I mean what they get for a whole forklift.
Speaker 9: [00:15:13] You know they were probably you know selling us some of the actuators into different parts the electronic parts inside the Stiers the solenoids and things. What they would get for the whole unit. You know when they’re not. So yeah they you know that’s that’s one of the great great stories I have with this business. Bill
Speaker 8: [00:15:34] how did you get into. I mean the sign business came first and he was