 Welcome everybody. It is Thursday and I am early. I think I think I'm early Put in that chat box there if you can hear me. I would appreciate it This is going to be an awesome session today Because I'm going to talk about my mistakes, okay Things I best stop and maybe I could help you out with that, but if you're new hey We do these live sessions Every day Monday through Friday 9 o'clock in the morning to help you guys start run and grow your online businesses So if you have other questions that aren't pertaining to my subject matter But they do pertain to running and growing online businesses. Feel free to put it that chat section I'll be happy to help you out. This is no charge. No sales not selling you anything whatsoever Just here to help you out with your businesses So, you know if you got questions about advertising sales pages email funnels, man, I did a funnel This week and I'll get into the subject matter in a second But I did a funnel this week and it has just blown up. It's gone crazy You know, I had I had we were selling canned meat and I had this thing where you know You could buy up to 10 cases, but that was the limit only 10 cases and that was like $1,590 and I had this guy go in and log in three times and buy the 10 cases three times You bought 30 cases 30 cases gosh does it's craziness, but we're doing well. Hey James. What's going on my friend? All right, let me check the weather here me and James always compare our weather. We show off our weather All right, let's see what James has got James has got 77 Sonny and breezy and what do I have James? What do I have I've got? Oh I've got cloudy today, and I've got 70, but you know what that's still pretty good, right? We got a 2% chance of rain, but I mean I think everybody has a 2% chance of rain, right? He's as loud and clear. I appreciate that James. Hey, don't forget to subscribe But there's a button down there, and I'm so close to hitting my 5,000 guys The other day I thought I was there and I was I was a hundred off So no figure, but if you would subscribe it would mean a lot to me and if you would ring the bell Turn all bell notifications here notified each and every time I go live or if I upload a video It'll notify you either way, but you have to have that on and give me a thumbs up that thumbs up matters so much I didn't realize that until just recently that just somebody hitting that thumbs up can really help your video So please if you would do that thumbs up thing I would really appreciate it and I know James did it. He said yeah I remember to smash the like button and you're so supportive, and I really appreciate you James I really really do it's very cool of you So what I'd like to do is get started. Yes, my throat is always rough in the morning Those of you who come here know that it's like I go from sleeping to sitting with my dog And I'll curl up on the couch to here in my office and kind of like yelling and screaming not yelling It's screaming, but you know, I've got some energy. Okay. I got a little bit of energy. I can't help that So then my voice is like oh wait, I'm not ready for you. I'm not ready for you Cloudy is good Let's see here. I love a rainy day just like Eddie rabbit You know what? What a good attitude no matter what it is. We love it, right? Because we're alive We're alive to do this. I went I went yesterday and got my other COVID shot in my arm and That's the one that supposedly makes you feel like crap. I mean you get really sick you get fever You get chills you get achy one of my friends Says he had he had a buddy who got it and he threw up for three days And I was like, oh man, I gotta go get it and I went I went there and the girl was getting ready Give me the shot and the girl she's the pharmacist. Okay, the older I get the word She seems like it's a girl But she's giving me the shot. I said, this is the one that gets me sick, right? And she looks at me and she goes. Yeah, this is the one that pretty much does it And I will let you know I got that shot yesterday afternoon. My arm is sore and that is it It's not even a sore is the first time around. So if you're contemplating getting those vaccines, you know Hey, it's up to you. It's a personal thing. Some people are against it. Some people are for it I was in the middle of the road, but I had some situations where I thought I should get it. So I did it. I Think probably for travel, you're probably gonna have to have some record of it So I have the record of it. So whatever I rolled the dice, you know In 20 years if I have something guilt wrong with me, I guess I could blame it on the shot or something But anyhow, I want to get into the subject matter today. I'm excited. I'm excited to tell you things That I screw up. Okay. I'm excited to tell you that stuff because you know, here's the deal man We all we all screw up. We all make mistakes And the first thing I'm gonna tell you guys Since I started off with we all screw up is number one. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid of that It's not a big deal man. It really is and we get so scared of failing I was talking to some of the other day and they they wanted to tell me something They finally told me something and I agreed with them and they said, oh my gosh I was so afraid to tell you this because I thought you would think I was crazy or you'd make fun of me or it was stupid And see we we we put up these walls and these blocks because we're so worried about what everybody else thinks, you know Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Gosh I mean the richest people in the world fail all the time matter of fact If you pick all these really super successful people and you dig into their background You're gonna find that They they they got a lot of problems They had a lot of issues not not that being successful gives you problems This is the more you try things the more you try things the more you're gonna have problems So what not a big deal number two thing number two thing was in the beginning. I didn't make a business plan I didn't have a real plan So guys I would suggest you doing that make a business plan have a plan as to what you're gonna do If you don't know where you're heading you don't know what you're gonna do It can really mess you up and I didn't in the beginning and I finally I actually got on the bandwagon pretty quick on that one And figured it out and now I pretty much plan out everything. I do okay, and that's gonna bring me to my number three thing I want to tell you guys about And that is kid organized kid organized. Oh my gosh in the beginning We get a little sippy real quick We hit right when Fukushima hit Japan and we were just growing our business and I was getting so many orders guys. It was insane. How many words I would get in a day I mean for me, you know, it was like 30 40 50, you know, sometimes 100 orders in a day And I was taking in these orders, but I didn't I wasn't organized. I didn't know what to do I didn't know how to enter them, you know, I was just really slow at it And these orders started to pile up and I got really far behind and fortunately about that time My wife came to work with me and she got me organized. She's a much more organized person than me And you know, there's little things along the way Like, you know, I had so many different logins for different sites and stuff like that and I would forget my passwords I was always resetting my passwords, you know in one day 2013 she was like, you know get this password App for your phone and you'll have them all there at one time and I resisted and I resisted and I now have that Password app. Let me share it with you because I want to help you guys out It's called in secure This is the app and let me just show you something here This is my password app and as you can see I have got a Lot of passwords in here now now imagine if I had not done that I mean it wastes so much time always reset your password because you forget them You can't remember them all and then they make you change them and all that Paul says organization is My biggest downfall working hard on it though. Well, you know what if you know, it's a downfall years You're working on it. You you you've almost got it solved. You really do James says Paul says how often did you revisit your plan? I have revisited my plan every day I mean I really do I look at what's going on what I had planned what I'm gonna do You know what my future is and every day I look at it and adjust my ads I look at every probably two or three days to make sure they're going right. I got to do that today In fact, we we've got to do some reorganization today for my wife's ads and my ads so we're gonna work on that You definitely married up, right? Obviously. Yeah, I believe so. I believe such awesome person Next thing I've got number four is understanding your market and target audience I did not do that in the beginning. I just thought hey everybody needs survival food. That is true Everybody does need survival food. However, not everybody's gonna buy it not everybody wants it not everybody believes in it So once I figured out That I needed to kind of target who these people were I needed to figure out who these people were I was much better off and the funny thing is when you start to target your audience They hear you and everybody else shuts you out, you know It's like if you're shopping for a new car Let's see you're shopping for a new car and you're watching TV or you're listening to radio, whatever You're gonna start hearing all the ads for cars. All of a sudden your ears are gonna kind of focus in on all those ads You know if you're shopping for furniture all the ads That you see on TV and all that all of a sudden you're gonna see them Whereas before when you were shopping for a car furniture, you didn't even notice the ads You didn't notice them It's just like when you finally do get the car, you know Whatever kind of car you get you see that car all over town It's like everybody's got that car all of a sudden because you know, you're so focused in on that one thing So, you know, that is really really important to understand that Number five is not a big one and I didn't have a problem with it But it will be a problem for some of you guys and that's filing for the proper legal structure and business Registration I have a video on this channel that goes through each legal structure And it explains what each legal structure is so, you know, check on my channel for that And I think it's a company structure or legal structure. So I just search that on my channel But that's really important to set that up right We are an S corporation right now And I'm revisiting that I really am when I moved to Texas. Is there is there a better way of doing stuff in Texas? I don't know we'll figure that out any plans to expand your survival cave product line Yes, and I think you asked me that in a comment the other day Paul, and I haven't gotten a chance to get to the comments I do have to do that today But yeah, we have a freeze-dried line. We're working on right now. We had one for years and years and years And we had some manufacturing glitches. So we had to revamp that but that is something we're going to revisit We definitely are going to do and it is in the near future It is it's kind of a double-edged sword, you know Our survival cave can meet us so well that we don't need a survival Food freeze-dried, but I know there's people that want it and I think we need to supply it to them So I'm gonna be working on that Next thing up and this is a big one and you'll notice this a lot if you haven't owned a business before Is don't try to do everything yourself Don't do everything yourself. You can't do everything yourself You're gonna want to really watch your money in the beginning and you're gonna say to yourself Well, you know, oh my gosh I could go ahead and enter this data here and I don't have to pay anybody anything. I'm gonna save all that money The problem is your time usage if you are entering in data, which is something anybody can do I mean pretty much if you can type you can enter in data that you're not doing something else It's not the matter of can you do something and save the money? It's a matter of what are you not doing to make money while you're doing that and that's how you have to start thinking about stuff If you think of things that way Then you're gonna start adjusting your time differently So it's really important to understand just because you're doing something and saving some money Doesn't mean you're not costing yourself more money by not doing something else. So if I'm doing data entry That means I'm not making a video. I can't have Anybody else make my videos because it's me. Okay, so I have to make my own videos. That's something I have to do So every time I do something that takes away from that then I'm not making a video videos make me money So that's something to think about. I can't Delegate videos, but I can delegate many other things. So that's what I've come to find out The next thing is I would almost say don't partner with anybody But don't partner with the wrong investors, you know I've seen this happen over and over again where people will partner up with other people and they get this great idea For this business and then they start to disagree And I know you say well, this is my best friend. This is my wife. This is my brother, whatever You will have disagreements. There's no way that two people are gonna think exactly the same at all times Now I'm not saying that some partnerships don't work because certainly there's been some very good partnerships However, they don't work for me. Okay, and they don't work for most people Because there's too many decisions to be made that people can disagree on so I want you to think really hard about that Partnership or investor thing. I don't like investors at all. We have we have no investors in our company We we don't have any debt or anything like that So that's how we run the business, but you know how you run yours is up up to you, but I would say take a look at that What else would I tell you don't hire too soon? That's another thing when people people always ask you like I say I have a business thing Oh really have any employees do you have and I know immediately that they don't understand business having number of employees Does not dictate how much money you make how profitable you are how big your business is it just means you've got more Debt, okay, and an employee is debt not that you don't need employees because we do have employees obviously But the more you have the more your nut goes up the more that you're Excuse me the last that you're going to be able to take out of your business because you got to give it to other people And you know when I had a warehouse in Poway, and I got rid of that and I use a 3 pl now where it's a warehouse that I pay For them to ship stuff out for me But when I had my own warehouse, you know, I had the warehouse. It was a six-bay warehouse 14,000 square feet They had a bunch of offices in it And I had warehouse people and I had receptionist and I had all these people that I had to come to work every day And hey, and I had to be there for which was another pain in the butt Now that I farmed it out to a warehouse in Utah. I don't see any of those people every day We talked to them online and they get out the orders. They do all that stuff, but I don't have to deal with them So there's something to be said about that. Don't hire too soon. Be very very careful about that Another thing is don't underestimate what things will cost Things always seem to cost more than what you think they just do So don't get too stretched out. Don't spend all your money. Keep some money in the bank You're gonna need it. You're gonna need it. Trust me on this. You're gonna need it When you spend all your money on all these things and you underestimate stuff you can run out of money super fast The next thing I'll tell you is don't waste your money now I've been pretty good about this one But man, I see so many people waste money and it's like, you know All these little things add up all these little tiny expenditures add up of your cash flow with a startup is so super important guys I've made a mistake of hiring too many people in the past. I have done that And then you know, you're spending all your money to fill the top of your funnel with new customers constantly Instead of really taking care of the customers you have you're wasting your money New customers are really tough to get keeping your customers is a whole lot easier and they're gonna be more profitable We're gonna buy from you. So, you know constantly spending tons of money on ads everywhere Can really really be a bad use of your money. Not that you shouldn't do ads you should But that's important too Next thing I would tell you is don't undervalue your product or service. I was guilty of that in the beginning I didn't charge enough for my products. I didn't charge enough for my services You know, even when I was doing coaching which I don't do anymore because it's just too time-consuming for me But you know, I wasn't charging enough money and I was surprised at how much people will pay me for coaching Though I don't Do it anymore because I just takes up too much of my time. I'd rather work on my own business You know, but don't undervalue it, you know, look at what everybody else is charging out there and charge At least that okay, and if you're better than everybody else you should charge more The other thing I'll tell you is don't expand too quickly That is a thing I did in the beginning with a huge warehouse and forklifts and me doing all this stuff And oh my god, I expanded and it was crazy how much my debts went up You know, I had the warehouse cost which was probably with all the Utilities and rent and all that stuff was about 20,000 a month And then you added employees on top of that and it was like wow And then of course you had to add the cost of my products and oh man It was a lot of money a month that I was spending all this money and I wasn't keeping anything I don't have that warehouse anymore. I have you know, my 3dl Which is third-party logistics in case you don't know And you know, I pay when a pallet comes in there and I pay when they package it and ship it and doesn't do all that But I don't have to pay for that warehouse every month. I don't have to okay, which is awesome I like that to me another sip here real quick in the next one is Make sure you have the proper bookkeeping set up This is a big one guys make sure you have the proper bookkeeping set up There's a lot of good softwares out there. We use quick books But we also have a corporate accountant And he does all the accounting for us But we got to get it organized if you're not good at something like this Hire somebody who is and don't get behind don't go You know in the next couple months. I'm gonna get all this stuff up to date Don't do that do it on a monthly basis get all your bookkeeping done on a monthly basis because you get far behind on this stuff and it can be a real nightmare and you also If you get far behind on this stuff, you don't really know where you stand You don't really know how much money you have you don't know what things are costing you And usually once a year I'll revisit all these things and see what things are costing me. It's funny. I have Office 365 I think something like that through go daddy And go daddy I have some emails through them and they've switched it over where you don't get free emails anymore And they went to charge me like two hundred eighty one dollars for emails And my wife was like, well, why don't you set them all up on Gmail? I said, well, I don't want a Gmail address. You know, no, no, no You can set up the business emails in Gmail and it's like $12 a month for up to 10 people. I'm like, what what is that? So I switched over. I've got like training at JR Fisher and supported JR Fisher and mail at JR Fisher all these different Emails that go into my site JR Fisher.com. I can now add all these emails there And it doesn't cost me all this money. She saved me a lot of money on doing that She's very helpful and stuff like that So yeah, get that bookkeeping set up guys get it set up Next up I would say is make sure you have a correct marketing plan. I didn't in the beginning I don't know what marketing was marketing was my website, right? No, it's not marketing is super important You know, it's having the right emails set up. It's having the right sales pages set up You know this the promotion I've done this week has generated tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, it's really been nice But I spent two weeks setting up the emails And the sales pages and the thank you pages and the upsells and all these things that went along with it I spent a lot of extra time doing that So you've got to create these marketing plans. They don't take care of themselves It's super super important to do that A lot of people don't and the thing also is you got the right tools I use Kartra k a r t r a when this video is over with in the description You'll see a link for Kartra and Kartra will automate all this stuff for you guys your emails your sales pages Dynamically what people see which is very cool Paul Paul, what you guys say buddy? Higher to be able to work on your own On your business not in it. Yeah, also to free up time Also hate doing a lot of work Saves me hours to be free to do others. Yeah, I guarantee that I guarantee you And I'm not doing the lawn either matter of fact Our house is being built and I was talking to the builder today or actually the rep for the builder We're having this irrigation system putting but we have the largest yard in the neighborhood for what that's worth And believe me that doesn't impress me. I had a three acre yard in Virginia and all I was was maintenance So I look at it as to what it really is now. It's not like oh, I've got this big yard No, you've got a lot of maintenance you got a problem. So Paul says ps love your email copy. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that I do write all my own emails Nobody's ever written an email for me. I don't copy anybody else's stuff. I mean, I've certainly got an ideas from other people But yeah, I do write my own emails and I appreciate that Paul. That's nice to hear What else can I tell you don't hire the wrong people? Different skill sets or different jobs different backgrounds are needed for different positions I worked with a large credit card company Recently and she had hired everybody wrong everybody everybody it was ridiculous, you know one of the guys who was their chief marketing officer Ran a bar in the Bahamas, you know He was he had a little small bar that went out of business in the Bahamas and she hired him as the chief marketing officer And then all she did was complain about how all these people she had these jobs We're doing well. I'm like, well, you hired the wrong people in every single job every single job. You hired the wrong people I Hired somebody from her high school who she liked a lot Who was a best friend of hers to be their marketing director? And I was like, well, she doesn't you know, she went to high school with she was what's that got to do with it? So don't hire the wrong people. Okay, don't hire a generalist a generalist or you know, I'm not a generalist You know, there's certain things I'm good at certain things. I'm not good at and I know that and I do the things I'm good at and I farm out the things. I'm not good at so that's another thing This is another big one I see a lot of businesses do is don't over promise and under deliver You need to do just the opposite. Okay, so don't promise people a whole bunch of stuff If you think it's gonna take five days to get something out to a customer tell them seven to ten Okay, tell them seven ten if it comes in in five days all the better all the better Okay, but the point is if you Promise these people stuff and it doesn't come through you're gonna ruin your reputation Okay, you're gonna lose your loyalty to these people. You don't want to do that Super important that you realize that We always try to under promise and over deliver. We give them more than what you know, we think we told them Let's see here In a lot of times people will do that to get potential customers will say, oh, yeah I can get it to you faster if you go ahead and buy for me now Don't do that. Don't do it. Don't do it. And that goes with your products too If you're seeing refunds your marketing is probably over promising if you're seeing refunds. We rarely see refunds Paul says what about micromanaging? Yeah, I Try not to do that. I try to have people in place Where I don't have to do that However, I'll catch myself doing that every now and then but every now and then, you know People say don't micromanage and I get that but every now and then no matter how much you trust somebody You know how much you like somebody no matter how good they are. You need to check behind them In every area and you need to check behind them in every area because maybe they've made some adjustments Maybe they've made some changes that don't work with your business plan And the thing is if you don't catch that stuff it can really get out of hand I had a situation like they yesterday person just made a change not a big deal. We got it fixed But you got to look at that stuff every now and then you don't need to be on top of them every day And the reason I think a lot of people micromanage if you want to call it that in other words check every single thing The person's doing it's because they didn't train them. Well, they get the wrong person in the job If you don't train them well, and they don't know what they're supposed to do You're gonna have to constantly correct them because they don't know what they're supposed to do It's your fault if you find yourself micromanaging. It's your lack of training is what it really is It's your lack of hiring the right person to the job. Maybe they don't have the talents for that job If you're constantly needing supervision plus the fact That if you're micromanaging and you're constantly correcting them and doing these things You're taking your time away from something else that you could be doing So that's something to really understand is that your time is so important the older I get the more I realize my time is important. Oh, I meant to laugh, right? So what am I gonna do with it? How am I gonna invest my time? What am I gonna spend my time on? The other thing I'll tell you is don't I mean I probably end with this one don't underestimate the demands of a business Let me switch to my other screen here real quick Your business even if it's an online business mine is no online business I don't have to be at a certain point for certain hours. In other words, like if I had a Hair salon, I would have to be there from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. Okay, and I could leave and get a lunch If somebody was covering for me Online is not like that, you know, you don't know if I'm here or not here However, that doesn't mean that my business isn't demanding You know, I had somebody yesterday who was having some issues with the logins on, you know One of my membership sites and I had to help them Sometimes late at night somebody will contact me about an order and they need help and I have to help them Certainly on the weekends People need help with stuff or need assistance or I have questions or whatever and I have to work on the weekends So bottom line is the demands of my business is is 24-7. I mean it really literally is 24-7 Now I've got to sleep obviously and I've got to eat and I've got to exercise Those are the things that are important and then you know have to have some leisure time But don't underestimate don't say well, I've got everything online. So I don't hardly have to work at all That's just not true as a matter of fact if everything is clicking along and Everything's going great and you have a good flow of money coming in That's the time where you need to start looking for more things to do. Okay, that's the time We need to say well, how can I improve this? How can I improve my profits? How can I improve my processes? How can I increase my income by having new products? What can I do to improve my business? So if you're lucky enough to get everything click it like that and everything's working well Then you need to spend time on working and improving and learning and doing more You should never really have this downtime that you talk about Certainly you can for vacations. Yeah, I'm not saying that but I'm just saying, you know Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday or Sunday, whatever it is make sure you're involved in your business online businesses demand a lot of attention and Sometimes I think they demand more attention than a you know brick-and-mortar business Because a brick-and-mortar business has certain hours that you have to be there and then after that There's nothing going on Not really. I mean there's some stuff But bottom line is you know if you own that mail salon and you've ordered all your supplies and you got all your employees And all that and you leave at six o'clock ain't nothing happening after six o'clock. Okay? That's not true with an online business. It literally is 24 seven people from around the world contact me and buy things So that's really important Hey, we've almost reached 30 minutes. That's pretty cool, right? Hey, did any of this stuff resonate with you? Have you seen yourself in any of these things I talked about today? Has it helped you out some I'm trying to get you know for you guys even more and more focused and more and more Organized so that I can help you with your businesses. I know if I keep feeding you this information It's gonna make you more and more money and that's what I want to do I really do if you feel like it's useful, you know, give me a comment there in that chat section Don't forget to subscribe. That's super important important Don't forget to ring the bell turn all bell notifications and give me that thumbs up And if you have any other questions, you can go ahead and pop them in there now I'll be happy to answer any of those questions. I know Paul James was really concerned the other day because she didn't show up So he wouldn't know why didn't you show up the other day? So, you know, but I get you can't be here every day But it was just kind of funny, you know, we really we miss our people when they're not here Have you any suggestions about getting addicted to more? Well, you know, I think everybody When you say addicted to more, I think you mean more work and more stuff and we're doing more things I think everybody has to find their own balance. And I think that that balance is within you My balance is I work, you know, on a regular basis, but I'm no Elon Musk. I mean I mean, he'll blow your mind, right? I mean, he just does so many things And I saw him walk into a crowded people. I told you guys the other day and he walked into it when he was so calm And like he didn't have a care in the world and I know he's got a rocket company If I had a rocket company, I'd be like, oh my god, I got a rocket company And he owns a car manufacturing company. If I had that, I'd be like, oh my god I got to worry about that all the time He seems to be able To allocate his time in all these different areas and he has a AI company where he's doing Neuro implants in the brain to bring people's limbs back to Using them again, and he's got a boring company and oh my god, he's got so much I had no idea what all he's got, but he seems to be able to manage all that The average person can't And I guess I would say is, you know, do what you can do You know and try to improve every day, but understand you're not everybody else and everybody else is not you Everybody else is different There's things that people do that a whole lot more than I do and there's people who do a whole lot less than me It's really what your balance is in life. There is no perfect balance. It doesn't exist You know balancing work life and you know your leisure time. I try to make time for everything Do I get out of balance every now and then? Sure sure I do Where none of us are perfect and does E-line get out of balance? I guess he doesn't look like it, but I guess he does Let's see what else we got here James says peace and blessings Always everyone. He always has a good input. You have to bounce check the rest later. Have a great day gang Paul's out. I appreciate you being here and guys. I'm going to go ahead and sign off too. I really thank you for being here I'll be here again tomorrow and saturday So we have some good sessions I think saturday is going to be really interesting for you because it's how to fix How to fix some of these problems that we have on a daily basis in our business I really appreciate each and every one of you here to love having you here guys You guys have a great day and work hard and get some stuff done Tell me what you got done. If you're watching this video And it's not live feel free to put anything you want to say in the comment section I will come back and I'll answer those Did you know That 3d printers are now used to build rockets and even houses I did not know that but that's gotta be a big printer. Oh wait, they probably build the parts to the houses, right? Yeah Probably so they probably don't print out the whole house at once But yeah, they're usually yeah, they use them for ghost guns. They got all kinds of stuff now They're doing with 3d printers pretty interesting stuff The world has changed changed, haven't it? I mean, I was talking to louis yesterday I went to lunch with a friend of mine. He's 86. He'll be 87 in august And I said, have you seen any changes? He's like, yeah He says I remember riding in a rumble seat of a car. He says it's just so bizarre what's changed And we were so lucky if we're if we're allowed to live for many years and see these changes I mean some people buy it, you know infant some people buy as a kid To to grow up and be an adult and see all these changes man. We're so fortunate guys We really are so be thankful be kind to everybody. You never know what they're going through, right? You never know