The Tim Ferriss Show - #351: Real 4-Hour Workweek Case Studies — Allen Walton and SpyGuy, The Path to Seven Figures

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

“And then I wake up at 7:00 a.m., and I roll over and look at my phone. And I have a notification from Shopify saying that I made my first sale for $149. And I let out this huge, orgasmic noise of relief. I was like, 'Wow. Everything’s going to be okay.'” — Allen Walton This episode is by popular request!In detail, we uncover a real-world case study of someone who built a seven-figure business after reading The 4-Hour Workweek (and other resources, of course).Two important people joined me for this jam session.First is Allen Walton (@allenthird), founder of SpyGuy, an online security store based in the Dallas, Texas area. Walton struggled in high school and spent a few years playing video games before his mom made him apply for a job at a local surveillance chain, where he worked from 2009-2011. He became interested in starting his own business after being exposed to The 4-Hour Workweek. In 2014, he went out on his own and started SpyGuy, his current business. He built the business to $1 million in revenue on his own, relying on what he learned in books and podcasts, and it now brings in seven-figure revenue with five employees.The second person joining me is journalist Elaine Pofeldt (@elainepofeldt), an independent journalist and speaker who specializes in careers and entrepreneurship. She is the author of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want, in which she looks at how entrepreneurs are scaling to $1 million in revenue prior to hiring employees.In this episode we explore the specifics of key decisions, helpful tools, early mistakes, and much more, all leading to a business that has exceeded all expectations. I had a blast doing this one, and I hope you have a blast listening!Click here for the show notes for this episode.*This podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients.FreshBooks tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more.Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim and enter “Tim Ferriss” in the “how did you hear about us” section.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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my listeners. To claim yours, check it out. Go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and enter Tim Ferriss in the How Did You Hear About Us section. And that is funky spell T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and enter Tim Ferriss in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Check it out. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is a special episode. I have two people seated right around me, and we are going to delve into what thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of you ask for, which are case studies related to perhaps what some of you might recognize as muses or startup businesses, Thank you so much for being here. It's my pleasure, Tim. Thank you. who is a journalist and the author of The Million Dollar One-Person Business. Thank you so much for being here.

It's my pleasure, Tim. Thank you. And Elaine and I have gotten to know each other over the last few years as she has profiled many people who have started businesses in many different contexts, and a fair number of them have been readers of or somehow inspired by, tactically or philosophically, by the 4-Hour Workweek, which is how we, well, I suppose we first connected ages ago when the first book came out. So, this goes back some distance. It goes back 10 years. In fact, I was telling you earlier that when I worked at Fortune Small Business Magazine, one of my duties was as the book editor. And I received a lot of submissions for books to excerpt. And your book was the only one I ever excerpted because a lot

of the other business books were not up to snuff. And that was how we initially connected. So it's been, and I so much appreciate that. Because back in the day, of course, with an initial print run of whatever it was, 10,000 copies, 12,000 copies, it didn't even have national distribution. So the fledgling, hatchling days were really, really a sensitive time that could have been an inflection point, which it ended up being, or it could have been crickets. So I appreciate the early support. And then we also have with us today Alan Walton. Alan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

And we are going to be delving into your story. And Alan was introduced to me by Elaine. And Alan is the founder of SpyGuy, one word, capital S, capital G, SpyGuy, which is an online security store based in the Dallas, Texas area. Alan, 30, currently 30? Yes, 30 years old. Learned the spy camera business while working in a store that sold spy cameras for $11 an hour. We will be getting into some of the backstory. And the next line is what I'm going to probably dig into first.

After getting frustrated with the world of traditional jobs, he used what he learned in the store to create his own online shop and got to $1 million in run rate before he hired any employees or before turning 30. And along the way, you found yourself in all sorts of interesting situations from spouses who need his help in catching a cheating mate to helping the police stop a child predator. And the business just keeps on growing. You now have five employees. So once again, Alan, thanks for taking the time. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about this getting frustrated with the world of traditional jobs. I think this is a common sentiment among lots of people listening, probably.

And could you tell us a little bit about that portion of your story? Yeah, so overworked and underappreciated, I guess is the term to use. I was working in a retail store that sold surveillance equipment. I was the only employee at the location. So if the store was empty and it was around like 2 p.m., I'd have to hustle outside the building to grab lunch real quick and come back because if customers were to come in and there's nobody there to help them, they could just take everything in the store. So it was just me and I was constantly having to monitor inventory levels, which they never gave me enough product to keep in stock. So I'd always have to drive for like a half hour to where the headquarters was, and pick up inventory, and load it into my car, and then bring it back to the store. So these

were like really long hours. I'd have to do that after my shift ended at like 7 p.m. And so it'd be 10 p.m. by the time I get back, and it was just a big mess. A little nervous. How old were you back then? You're good. You're good. And this is exactly what I would say. This is the biggest unscratched itch of people who listen to this podcast. So I'm really happy you're here. And I can't wait to learn more about your story because I'm coming in as fresh as possible.

I have the bare minimum necessary for it all to pique my interest. And there you are, driving around, trying to steal a sandwich in between visitors so that disaster does not befall this establishment or get you fired. When did you start thinking about starting your own business and why? How did that come about? So this is where we kind of get into that job I had in between starting Spy Guy and then working in the retail store. Basically, I had this opportunity that came up through a customer of mine. They were a detective for a TV show called Cheaters. And it came at the perfect moment. I was very stressed out with my employer and just life in general, I guess. And I remember this customer coming into my store

and saying, hey, my boss wants to meet with you. And he's the guy that created the TV show Cheaters. Yeah, they took me out to lunch. And it turned out that a lot of people who watched the TV show were calling in because they suspected that they had a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a spouse that was having an affair. And so they'd want the TV show to come in and investigate it. And they don't have the resources to handle that many calls. So they had the bright idea of opening up an online security store, which is what I knew about. And they wanted to sell hidden cameras, GPS trackers, covert audio, phone monitoring software, all sorts of surveillance equipment. And so I created that store for them. And that lasted for about three years before I decided that I really wanted to work for myself. And I did all of the exercises in four-hour work week

and ended up leaving in 2014 and starting Spy Guy. How did the, and don't worry, people who are listening, I'm not going to turn this into an infomercial for the four-hour work week, but having come across so many different stories, there are many different ways that people get to the book. How did you, or have it, get to them? How did that enter the picture? I remember it pretty vividly, actually. I was living with my parents at the time, and I guess this was in 2011 when The 4-Hour Body came out,

right? Yeah. Yeah, 2010, 2011, 4-Hour Body comes out. Okay. So, my dad had cancer, and he was trying to research things that would make him feel better, recover from that. And I remember coming down the stairs to my parents' house, and I hear my dad on the phone. And he's like, yeah, this guy, he races motorcycles and kickboxes and salsa or tango dances. It's crazy. And it just kind of perks my interest. I'm like, wait, there's one guy that does all of these things? I'm just playing video games in my spare time, and this guy's living an amazing life.

This sounds really interesting. And so I wait for my dad to get off the phone, and I'm like, what are you talking about? And he goes, oh, I just found out about this book called The 4-Hour Body. It was mentioned on a website called Instapundit. Yeah, yeah, sure. And I remember loading up Amazon and then clicking on your name and then seeing The 4-Hour Workweek. And I'm like, hey, now that sounds interesting.

And so I remember getting a copy of the book. And I remember seeing page 90. Like, I was on page 90, and I'm like, wow, this is unlike any other book I've read before. This is blowing my mind. So that's how I stumbled into the world, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of surreal for me, because I feel, despite the fact that I am now bald and once wasn't 10 years ago, I feel like, in some respects, it was just yesterday that I'm now bald and once wasn't 10 years ago, I feel like in some respects, it was just yesterday that I put that book out. So it's always wild to come to the realization

sometimes it's been more than a decade now. So you're reading this book, you're on page 90, and you've decided you want to start your own business, what are some of the first steps that you end up taking? Whether that's research or actually giving it a go and building something, what were some of the very first initial steps that you took? Well, I'd already had... Or how did you prepare for it? I mean, either or.

So I actually have my notes. I don't know that you want me to get up and grab them right now, but I actually have the original notes that I took of each chapter and then the fear-setting exercises and everything like that. Okay, you know what? Yeah, let's grab it. While you grab them, I have to say that I noticed that in interviewing owners of million-dollar one-person businesses, that is a habit.

A number of them have saved their original notes from the four-hour work week and still refer back to them today. That's so wild. Yeah. Cool. So we have a yellow legal pad. I used to use these as well, because I grew up with my dad using legal yellow notepads.

Yeah, I'm not sure what dad using legal yellow notepads yeah i'm not sure what it is about the notepads but um yeah every book i read i take notes like this and so for our work week i wrote down some of the quotes that you open each chapter with and then other things that speak out to me and so talking about deal deal for those people who haven't read the book is a framework, which is define, eliminate, automate, and liberate, which correspond to different activities and a process that you can go through for, among other things, building, building businesses that generate cashflow and the fear setting exercise that you did, do you recall any of that? Oh, yeah. It looks like I just basically wrote this entire book on my legal pad.

So, yeah, define your nightmare. What's the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you're considering? And I guess I was considering leaving my job, which was paying well, and then taking substantially less income but being my own boss. And so I wrote down what the possible outcomes were, which were I lose at most $10,000 in the time it took to make the company. And that's only if I fail. Have some other particularly far-fetched scenarios. Anything you can share? Yeah, I was worried that my employer was going

to sue me, and then I was going to have to spend a lot of money in court and probably lose a lot of more money if I lost or something like that. I don't know why I thought I would get sued, but you know, it's just... Yeah, well, I mean, part of the point of the exercise is to put down these oftentimes nonspecific or, in some cases, ultimately unjustified fears, because we all have them. But if you don't put them on paper, they're very hard to see for what they are, very hard to examine. Anything else on the worst case? Sure. So I said, neither scenario is permanent, and I could definitely recover from either of them. The pain would be a three to a four on a scale of one to 10 if either of these happened. I don't think the odds of them are very strong. If I were sued,

I would presumably have enough money for a good lawyer to win the suit. So, I mean, this is just, you know, absolute worst case scenario. And even then, it really didn't even seem that bad. So you go through the fear setting exercise, which is called fear setting for those people who are wondering, because it is somewhat akin to goal setting in the sense that in either case, or I should say in the case of goals, if they're not specific, they're very hard to achieve. And in the case of fears, if you do not make them really specific and define them, they're very hard to overcome or can be hard to overcome. So for those people interested, you can go to tim.blog

forward slash TED, as in T-E-D, since I gave a TED Talk on this and provide all the forms and so on for you to do this if you'd like to try it out yourself. So you do this exercise. You figure out that the worst case scenario is the downside risk is a transient three to four from one to 10, and the potential upside is a lot higher. So what do you do then as any of your first steps that come to mind? You do this, you're building up the confidence. Notice I'm not saying courage, of of analysis and determining that you can you can mitigate and tolerate the potential downside risk and then uh sort of optimize for for getting it right so what did you what do you then do

well i guess the next thing i did was just quit my job yeah uh i really wasn't even thinking about it most people say to have a backup plan Well, I guess the next thing I did was just quit my job. Yeah. I really wasn't even thinking about it. Most people say to have a backup plan. Yeah. Or, excuse me, like just something to fall back on and then start your business on the side. I decided to just jump right into it. I was so sick and tired of working that job that I was at that I gave my two weeks notice. And then after two weeks were up, I was like, wow, okay,

I'm not getting checks anymore. I need to actually get to work. And so I think that I had actually gone to some of the resources that I mentioned. I specifically remember seeing Shopify on there, which is what i started my store on and i'm still on that to this day um it's an e-commerce platform that makes it really easy for you to oh this is not a pitch uh basically shopify just allows me to have a website where i can sell my stuff yeah they do they do a really good job yeah

and they're they're're also some of the nicest guys you would ever meet. A bunch of boys from Ottawa, Canada. And it's now, I guess, the most dominant e-commerce platform in the US. So you saw Shopify. You're no longer getting these checks. Let me back up for one second to ask you, how did you feel? Like you give your notice. Did you do it in person, via email, via phone? How did you give your two-week notice? I did it by email. And that was only because my boss,

he lived a distance away. So I was kind of working remotely for him. Oh yeah, no judgment at all. I'm just wondering, how did it feel when you hit send on that and the email was sent? It was a huge relief. And it was really funny because about two minutes after I hit send, one of the guys that I work with, he got a phone call from my boss and then asked if he wanted to run the company since I was leaving. And then

my boss didn't actually respond to me for a week. But I was right next to the guy. So I know he read the email within two minutes. You had your mole in the organization for all the intel you needed. How appropriate. Okay, so you find some of these resources like Shopify. Then what? Because ostensibly there are other people online trying to sell things like surveillance equipment. So how do you think about increasing the likelihood of success? What are

some of the other things that you did? Well, by this time, I was really familiar with Google AdWords. And Google product listings had just come out, which made it really, it's known as Google Shopping now, but it made it really easy for you to get in front of people like instantly. So I knew that if I were going to start a website, then people don't just magically show up. They kind of make it seem like that's going to happen. And if you build it, they will come type of scenario.

And that's not true at all. It actually takes a lot of work to build up traffic. And so with Google ads, I could pay to have people who are highly targeted, like they were actually searching for like a GPS tracker in Google. And then my website would come up and I'd have to pay if they click on that link. But I just, I purchased several books and I read a lot of blog posts on Google AdWords. And so that's how I generated traffic to the website initially.

And it's still part of our traffic strategy to this day. What are some of the, are there any particular resources if you were sitting down with someone in a non-competitive category? Let's just say they have similar experience. They worked, and I'll come back to this because I think it's a really important point.

So they work somewhere where they get an education on a certain product category on someone else's dime. Other people's money. Really helpful. And that can be engineered and planned for. Someone is doing that for, who knows, Lady Gaga-like platform shoes. That's their specialty.

And if people are like, that's crazy, you could never make a business out of that, go read 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly and then come back to this podcast and you will probably think differently. But let's just say that is their area of expertise. They worked in a shop, they know everything there is to know about these sort of performer, rockstar-type platform shoes. And they're looking to approach it maybe in a similar way to how you've approached your category. Are there any resources, books, that you would recommend for getting more familiar? Well, overall, any that you would recommend,

and then specifically to customer acquisition, maybe paid marketing, pay-per-click, whatever comes to mind. Are there any others that you found helpful or would recommend? Sure. So, 4-Hour Workweek is what got the ball rolling. And then there were a couple of other books that I found super helpful that I read around the same time. So Choose Yourself by James Altucher that I found really super helpful. It was really fascinating to hear some of the case studies that were in there because that book came out, I don't know, i want to say maybe like five or six years after four hour work week did and in choose yourself he also gives a lot of case studies and i remember one of them being i think the guy's name is brian from pay

uh braintree yeah yeah yeah johnson brian johnson who's from braintree has also been on the podcast yeah he did all right yeah sold it for a few hundred million dollars to eBay, I think it is. Right. But he had really humble beginnings as well. He just started as like a really super small credit card processor. Oh, selling credit card processing door to door. I mean, walking into retailers. So I found that to be incredibly helpful and mostly just reaffirming what for our work, like building on what for our work we had laid the foundation for just kind of believing that i had this in me to you know carve a path

so that was one of them the other one was a book called um the millionaire fast lane by mj demarco and it's really funny because all of the best books have like the worst names. Yeah. The four hour work week blessing and a curse. Yeah. Uh, I will teach you to be rich as another resource that I've used a lot. Ramit Sethi's, um, uh, he has courses that I've found really helpful, specifically the one on copywriting, learned how to write significantly better through that course. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing was fantastic for just learning about what sets brands apart and how to position yourself and why it's important to try and create a category and how there's different strategies that you can employ.

He also wrote 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, which I thought was really good as well, but doesn't get as much attention for some reason. Yeah, there's branding, marketing, and then positioning, I think is another co-authored book. All of them worth digesting. Some of the examples they use are outdated, much like a lot of business books, because no one can predict the future. So you look at good

to great. Well, a lot of those so-called great companies are long since gone. But there are regime changes, there are macroeconomic changes, and so on. Nonetheless, when you read, say, the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the law of category, the one that you mentioned, is particularly important, even if some of the examples are a bit outdated. These are all great, very complimentary examples. Ramit is very, very good at copywriting. I just want to underscore that.

And Seti is S-E-T-H-I. And on Choose Yourself, I want to highlight, I mean, James is a friend, but I knew of his work before I became friends with him. Choose Yourself, I think, is particularly important. And the example you brought up is very appropriate because whether it's Brian's story or, I would imagine, Elaine, a lot of the people you've interviewed, it's not as though people have figured everything out and they have a flawless plan that will be able to execute reliably, and then they start their business. There is a lot of testing and having the confidence that you will be able to figure it out, which I think Brian is a good example of as well.

So you have these resources. You've done a bunch of homework. You have some practice with Google AdWords. Then what? So I built up the website. And to that, I needed to take product photography. I didn't have any unique images at all. So one of the things I'd recommend is

if you're using manufacturer images, that's a terrible, terrible thing to do. You really need to be taking your own product images. You can do it much better and it's good for SEO and other things like that. So I bought a little, what do they call it? A white box where you stick the product in. And then I took photos of it.

And then I remember, um, I did all of this from a two bedroom apartment in Richardson, Texas. It's a suburb of Dallas. And I just remember staying up really late. My wife would come in and like, you know, I'd kiss her good night. And then I'd put on Spotifyify i'd have music that i listened to uh like the same stuff over and over again like i wouldn't your playlist yeah the playlist it was just the same like album what did you listen to i listened well two albums

the first one was an album called the master plan by oasis and And then what was the other one? It was Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne. I don't know why, but I would just have those on repeat. It was good for working. And so I would be writing product descriptions. And I remember I bought like a dollar Kindle book and learned how to write product descriptions. And it was difficult, but eventually...

You bought a Kindle book on how to write product descriptions? Yes, specifically. How to write seductive web copy was what it was called. Yeah, so I would write product descriptions. I would be editing the photos. So taking photos photos uploading them making sure everything looked good i did this all with a it was 140 theme on shopify and which is amazing because i remember at a previous company that i worked for we spent like 30 000 on a website

and it like was so difficult to like edit and make the way you wanted. And for $140, you could get a theme that was really, really good. It was already optimized for conversions and easy to edit. And so I just remember being so stoked that I was able to get this thing up and running for only a few hundred dollars. And so writing web copy, taking photos, trying to optimize my Google ad campaigns before they went live, because I didn't want to turn on the campaign and then go to bed. And then all of a sudden I spent like $7,000 overnight. Yeah, that's not a happy morning.

So yeah, it was just getting the website to be good enough that I could turn the ad campaign on, and then people would come to my website and make a purchase. And as long as I was breaking even in the beginning, I would have been happy. So I could cover the cost of the product that I was selling, cover the cost of the ads that I was paying for. And yeah, I turned my ad campaign on. I had started working on the business in March. For some reason, it took me an additional two months to make it go live. I think it took more time than I realized to get going. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to find a job or something before this website launches. I was probably just being a little too perfectionist. I probably just needed to push it live. And so I remember it was May 23rd. I turned the campaign on at like 3 a.m.

I'm like, all right, it's time to make this thing happen then i go to bed and then i wake up at like 7 a.m and i roll over and look at my phone and i have a notification from shopify saying that i made my first sale for 149 and i let out this huge like orgasmic noise like i was like wow like everything's gonna be okay. So it was like a huge, um, just validation that, you know, I had it in me to do the entrepreneur thing, I guess. Yeah. That first sale. I mean, I, I remember some of my very first sales with anything that you've started from scratch. And because there's, at least in my case, and I think a lot of cases, there's this, there's this niggling little doubt

in the back that's like, I'm not sure if this is actually going to work or if it can work. And then when you have that first sale, you're like, okay, this actually might work. I want to, and Elaine, feel free to jump in at any time. I know I'm kind of on a roll here because I've had plenty of caffeine as well, but the wife. So how did you present to her before you quit? If you did, I don't know. Not everyone does. The prospect of starting your own gig. Was that an easy conversation? Was that a hard conversation? How did you approach that? I don't think it was a particularly difficult conversation. She had a job at the time,

and it was, you know, it's like, okay, money. It wasn't amazing or anything like that. But we had money saved up from my job job and then her income. So I figured, you know, we'd be able to get by if this didn't pan out. And she knew I was really unhappy. And I don't know, she was cool with it. I had to explain it to her parents, who were much more skeptical. I remember sitting down in their living room and I was like, I casually mentioned that I was like quitting my job or whatever, uh, to start a business. And, you know, pretty much everyone, when you say that, like they instantly like kind of, I don't want to say they judge you, but a lot of them are like, are you sure you really want to do that? Cause you know,

it's a stable income and um they maybe they think you'll fail or something like that but i felt like i had a lot of people that weren't entirely sure with my decision and so i remember explaining to them like yeah so this is how google ads works and like i lost them like as soon as i mentioned that but they're like this google you talk of and how long had you been married at that time oh Oh, I think only like a year. Only a year. Yeah. Yep, just about a year.

One of the benefits that I'm kind of ashamed I've never talked about before, but one of the benefits of an exercise like the fear setting exercise is that you can then use that. You've done the thinking through of many of the things that will jump immediately to mind for someone who is maybe blindsided or hasn't done all the thinking on the leap like you have and then you have ready answers because you've already gone through the app right all of the worst case scenarios that you've been able to come up with. So you have your first sale. What was it? $149 you said?

Yeah. $149.99. $149.99. And what was the item? What did you sell? It was a voice recorder. It's just a really small, it's not even, so we sell concealed recorders like hidden inside of a pen, for example.

But this one is just a really small recorder with a long battery life. And for whatever reason, customers really like it. And that was the first item I sold. And Zanell, walk us through the next steps. What happens then? Because I'm sure there are people listening and I'm wondering as well. Do you have a bedroom slash garage full of inventory you're

hoping to sell? Do you have people in China? Do you have what? So the order is placed. Then what happens at that point? And maybe it's changed, but at that point, what happens? Yeah. I think as of the first day that we went live we were probably getting like 10 orders a day um and yeah this is in my second bedroom and i don't i have ten thousand dollars worth of inventory in this bedroom and is that ten thousand dollars you have spent on the inventory or ten thousand dollars okay guys so that's so the retail value would be much higher yeah and so uh i was like too cheap to buy shelving for it too so it's just scattered everywhere like all over the floor and up against the walls and stuff my wife hated it and uh yeah so i also had like packing supplies because you know you you got to get customers their stuff right so i'd have

boxes and uh packing paper and envelopes and everything like that you were smarter than i was i did packing peanuts back in the day and my first disaster yeah whenever i see people whenever people ship me in peanuts i'm like you open the box. Terrible customer experience. So, yeah, people were placing orders. I remember we were probably spending about $100 to $200 on AdWords each day and getting no organic traffic at all. And the $200, was that a limit that you had set yourself? Yeah, it was a limit that I had set just to make sure i didn't suddenly you know spend a couple thousand dollars because i made some really tiny mistake like i had a dash

somewhere that shouldn't be there right um so we're spending yeah about one to two hundred dollars a day i had a cap on it so we wouldn't go over that until I could look at the numbers and then make sure that we were actually profitable. And it kind of took off from there. We started spending a little bit more money. We started getting more data from Google, like how people were finding us, like exactly the keywords that they were typing in doing some ab testing with uh the ad itself so we would change the copy of the ad or like the headline of the ad to see which performed better and yeah uh things really took off once i started um yeah i mean what we could do we could come back to some of the smartest earlier decisions that you made.

Like in retrospect, we're like, okay, these are really important decisions. I want to talk about the bedroom and the inventory. So the $10,000 of inventory, I suppose... You want me to riff on that for like a second? I'd love for you to riff on that for like a second i'd love for you to riff on that because there are many different ways to try to approach this inventory question sure right so how did you make the decision to fill up the bedroom uh two parts right so the first is like how did you make that decision and then if you were to do it over again, would you do it the same or differently? All right.

So when we went live, I had about 10,000 in inventory scattered across the bedroom. And I was fulfilling all the orders myself. So around 3 p.m. each day, I would stand up, start looking for whatever it was that customers had ordered, and then pack it. And then I'd have to throw it into the back of my car and drive to the post office. And I did that every day for about six months or so. And then it became a huge issue because my car couldn't hold enough, like the trunk wasn't big enough to hold all the packages. And then I was also living on a third floor apartment. And I'd have to drive to the post office. And then when I was purchasing inventory from overseas, they'd ship it to a private mailbox that I had. It was like a,

you know, it's not a UPS store. It's like a private mailbox. And they would accept the shipment for me. And then I'd have to go pick it up, these huge boxes. I'd have to get them in my wife's car because my car wasn't big enough to carry all of it. And then I'd have to carry it up three flights of stairs into the bedroom and then unpack it. And there would be cardboard dust and all sorts of crap everywhere. It was like a mess. And then I'd have to go back downstairs and throw away all the cardboard. And this was my life for like six months.

By the time that, let me think. By the end of the year, I started the business. I had my first sale like in May. And I remember. This was which year? Oh, this was in 2014. And so November's rolling around. And I'm like, I can't do this anymore.

Just packing orders is taking up like two to three hours of my day. And all while I'm also answering phone calls, because I have my phone number bright and center at the top of the web page. As soon as people land on it, everyone can see the phone number. Whereas most e-commerce stores actually try to hide it. I wanted people to call because i knew i could close them over the phone and so they would call and i'd be which you knew you could do because you had a lot of experience also at retail exactly yeah talking to customers that that was so beneficial because i'd be on the other side of a counter from the customer and they'd come in and they'd say

i've got this problem like i think somebody is um abusing my parent in an alzheimer home or i think something's going on with my kid they're autistic i think the other kids are like bullying them um what do you have for that and so i would be able to gauge how they felt about certain products and just pick them with the perfect item so when they called i already knew what most of their problems were and it allowed me to just definitively say like this is the thing that's going to solve your issue and so um yeah i had where were we going from here? No, I can rewind. The decision. Yeah, so you were doing hours of picking and packing every day.

Yeah, I was doing live chat. You were doing all of live chat and phone calls. Live chat, phone call, and then picking and packing orders all at the same time. And I remember, I mean, one of my favorite stories to tell was going out to lunch. I went to In-N-Out, and I was doing three live chats all at the same time. And then I had a customer place a $2,000 order while they were in a live chat with me. And I'm sitting at In-N-Out eating a burger. And I'm like, man, this is crazy.

I never would have thought that something like this were possible. And so I was doing all of those things at the same time and it, I was just neglecting the AdWords campaign entirely because that was just very data driven and I didn't have the, I guess the bandwidth to go in and analyze all of this stuff. And so I've kind of let that go on autopilot for a couple of months. And that doesn't really work very well. And yeah, so I decided to hire an employee. And I guess it was about six or seven months after I started the company. After you started. Yep.

Just to help with customer service. So let's talk. We're going to come back to the employee. But I don't want to let the inventory go just yet. OK. Because people listening are like, 10 grand? oh my God, that's so much money. Did you decide to do that because you knew which items

or you had a high degree of confidence in which items would sell and you just felt most comfortable buying the inventory? Is it because you didn't know of other ways to approach it besides buying inventory? Could you explain having the confidence to spend $10,000? And maybe it was credit card financed instead of out of your bank account. I have no idea.

Yeah, it was out of the bank account. It was. Yes. And so there are a couple reasons why I had the inventory there. Number one was, it was coming from overseas. And I didn't know how the whole e-packet thing really worked. I don't even know what that is. Oh, really? So what's that? So that's when you order stuff, it's really popular with Chinese factories. They'll actually just start listing products that they sell on Amazon. And then they use, it's subsidized by the United States to send extremely cheap packages very quickly. So it actually costs like only a couple dollars to send something from like, you know, Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen.

They'll send it over to the US for just like two or three dollars or something like that. Wow. To the end recipient. Yes. And that's really popular with FBA sellers right now. FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon. So that's a really hot business model at the moment where a lot of companies, they list products that are currently being made in China. They'll list those on Amazon. And then when the item sells, they'll just pick up the, or they'll just email the factory and say, Hey, I need you to send this package over to my customer in California or whatever. And they'll get it within like a few days. And it only costs a couple dollars. Whereas for somebody to actually have

inventory in Texas and then ship it to California, it actually costs more than that. So at the time that you got the inventory, were not familiar with maybe it didn't even exist i don't know how long this has been in existence but e-pack it so you did not want to have to wait a long period of time it would have taken like two weeks or something like that for the customer to get it also um the fact so some of the factories just straight up wouldn't even do that for me. They weren't willing to do, you can kind of think of it as like a drop shipping model where once the item is sold, then you actually, you know, purchase it from the manufacturer, whoever's distributing it, and then they'll ship it on your behalf.

And so some of my suppliers didn't want to do that. And so I would actually have to put in an order for like 100 or 200 units or something like that in order to actually have that inventory to sell to the customer. Right. How did you choose which products you would buy for that initial $10,000 of inventory? I knew that most of my sales were going to come from just a handful of products. So that's like the whole 80-20 thing. And that was based on your previous experience? Just based on the previous experience. I want to pause for just one second to really highlight this

because very often I meet folks who want to, say, start their business, their first business right out of college. And sometimes that is a great approach. Sometimes it works out really well. But whenever possible, I like to recommend that people do their real-world MBA by learning on someone else's dime and acquiring some of the skills and testing some of the things that you tested before then gambling with limited savings that you might have. So, anyway, speech complete.

I think I remember you telling me, Alan, that you also picked the inventory with an eye on which ones would not be returned a lot based on what you had learned in the store. Do you remember that? Yeah, and that's something we still do. So a lot of my competitors, a lot of people just want to sell anything and everything they possibly can. But I sell electronics,

and electronics are really difficult to, it's a difficult industry. And because you have to give like tech support to customers, whereas with other things like soft goods, like, you know, bags and clothing and stuff like that, those do have high return rates, but you don't really have to talk to the customer at all. Whereas with tech support, that's like a huge customer service thing. And so I only, when I started, and I still do, we only carry stuff that we really, really like. And that's high quality. So that when our customers get it, they're not like really irritated that it's like, you know, a piece of crap electronic that that's barely working that was imported from China

or something like that. If you were to go to Amazon and type in spy camera or something, most of the stuff that's listed is only two and a half stars, three stars. It's being sent directly by the factory in China, and they don't offer tech support at all. And so we try to just carry products that we know our customers are

going to love, that they're not going to want to return, that are easy to provide tech support on. And that's worked out really well for us. What I'm hearing, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it gives me an opportunity to also clarify my position on something, which is I am not against high-touch customer service. So some people who have read, said, before our work week will think that everything should be automated. But there are certain instances where, for instance, you are able to use

not just product or SEO or something else as a competitive advantage, but use customer support as a competitive advantage, which can be a huge competitive moat, so to speak. It insulates and protects your business in a lot of ways because it is a hurdle that many other people are not going to be willing to make. It's very unlikely you're going to have some competitor in like Armenia who's going to decide

to offer high touch support in English. It's just, it's, or anywhere else. It's, it's, it's a, there's a steeper learning curve and you have experience that gives you an advantage in implementing that. So I'm glad that we're talking about this because it ultimately, I mean, you started in 2014, you said, right? We're now, as we're recording this, soon to be 2019, and you're still going strong, as far as I can tell. Yes. And that is not the case with a lot of folks who anticipate that their one connection to one manufacturer and their batch of 30 secret keywords is going to keep them alive forever, which is very, very rarely the case. So coming back to where we left off before I dragged us back into the world of inventory,

which I think is important. The employee, now, did you decide to make them a full-time hire right off the bat? Did you, how did you find them and walk us through the thought process for, was there a breaking point also? Was there like a specific day where you were just like enough, I need to get this fixed. Uh, and walk us through the thought process. I don't know that there was a specific day. I just remember the general feeling of dread I had whenever 2 or 3 p.m. would roll by, and I'm like, oh my gosh, the phone hasn't stopped ringing. I have to pack all of these orders. I've got to go to the post office,

which was just such a drag, going up and down the stairs of my apartment. I had to wait in line at the post office just to give them a trash bag full of stuff. They want to let me drop it off. So I might be there for like 15 to 20 minutes until they'll accept the packages. And yeah, I realized that it was taking up too much of my time. And I was still like kind of referring back to the four-hour work week. Like every couple months, I'd kind of like go back and be like, okay, what am I not doing right here? And I realized that I wasn't kind of offloading the $10 an hour tasks so that I could focus on the, you know, 100 or

a thousand dollar an hour tasks. The in and out phone call tasks. Yes. Or live chat, $2,000 order tasks. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm like, you know, I really want to quit it with this post office thing. I don't really know what to do. The 3PL, the third party fulfillment fees, if I were to have somebody else take this over from me, it would just be far too high. Third party fulfillment, meaning you find a center which will house your inventory and interface with you in some way for order processing and so on. Yeah, they've got a warehouse. Just the setup costs and all that. Yeah, exactly.

And so there's a pallet somewhere with my products on it, and they'll pack it for me and ship it out. And it's usually like a flat rate, but it was going to really eat into the margins. And so I was just like, I can't be on the phone all day anymore. I really need help. But phone orders make up like 20% of our sales. So I can't just turn off the phone, really. So I decided to go back to one of the guys that actually trained me in the surveillance industry.

From that original store? Yeah, from the original store that I started working. Yeah. In 2009, it was May 2009. I got hired at that store and they had four locations at the time and each location had its own sales manager. And so my first week of the job each day was at a different store in North Texas. And on Friday, I remember it being on a Friday, I went into the location that he still works with me. His name's Vince. And I remember going into Vince's store and he was teaching me about setting up the CCTV DVR so that it would record on motion. And then he had

an eight-camera package system that he was closing the sale on. And so he was packing up all the cameras and the cables and the power supplies. And then he showed me how the GPS trackers worked. And then all of the crazy stories that you might expect to hear from a brick-and-mortar spy shop. I just remember it being so much fun. And so he was my favorite guy to work with at the store. And I didn't know who else to turn to because this is kind of a weird industry. And it takes a lot of customer knowledge.

And I just didn't have it in me to teach anybody else what I knew. So I went to him, and it was an opportune time for him. And so we decided to make that happen. I think it was like the February or March of 2015. And what was the first week like with him? It was great. I mean, he worked from home. So we don't live in the same city at all. But through the wonders of the internet, I was able to make it so that if somebody

were to call the 800 number on the website, then it would ring him on his computer. And that's all he did at the time, was just customer service. Customer support. So you were still handling the picking and packing? Yeah, I was still doing the picking and packing, but at least I wasn't taking as many phone calls until we grew to the point

where we were getting more phone calls. And then I have to get on the phone again. It was just impossible for me to do things from the third floor of my apartment. And so Vince has a house with a garage. And I'm like, hey, he can take care of all the shipping and all of the phone support and do live chats and stuff for me. So I just really offloaded stuff to him, which was great because when he wasn't on a call, then he could be placing the orders throughout the day. He didn't just have to wait until like 2 or 3 p.m. like I was

because the inventory was just hanging out in his garage. And so he became my fulfillment guy. orders throughout the day. He didn't just have to wait until like 2 or 3 p.m. like I was because the inventory was just hanging out in his garage. And so he became my fulfillment guy in addition to the customer service. And so I finally got all the inventory stuff out of my hair. Were you a good manager from the outset? Did you have experience from working in previous jobs or was that something you had to learn how to do? No, I definitely had to learn how to do it. I had to learn that on my next employee because the first one was the guy that trained me. And so he was pretty much autonomous. Like he could just do his thing and I didn't really even have to think about it at all. But then when

I had my second employee, that's when I'm I'm like oh so this is why everyone complains about managing employees and having teams and you know just I know so many entrepreneurs that say that running that managing the team is like the hardest part of their job and finding employees and I totally get that now that was the lesson that most people learn on the first employee for me that was my second one you're like I don't know what everyone's complaining about this is easy all right so you get this the second employee how much later did you hire them did you bring them on immediately full-time as a contractor and then what uh what helped you to learn how to manage them yeah i think that was a full year after i hired the first one uh it was a friend of mine uh that was a full year after i hired the first one uh it was a friend

of mine uh that was probably the first place i went wrong uh it was a good friend of mine who was also unhappy with his job and i don't know i think it's because i i really wanted to help him out and i needed somebody to help out with my company too. I was still spending a lot on paid advertising. And I'm like, man, I haven't had any time to focus on SEO related tasks and projects. Search engine optimization for organic. Yes. Getting people to come to the site without having to pay for each visit. Exactly. So I knew that was a priority. And my friend had no marketing experience whatsoever. But he's a really nice guy.

And he hated his job. And I needed somebody to commiserate with on the whole entrepreneurship front. And I'm like, maybe he can just be an apprentice type of person. I'll teach him what I know. And then he'll go on and do something else. And all the while, he, he's helping me, you know, build a company. And then that's when I realized that I had no idea what I was doing with managing people. Like, this guy knew nothing about my industry. He didn't know anything about marketing. And I'm like, wait, I have to teach him all this stuff? Like, or get him courses and books and things

like that? This is like, going to be a huge drag. And so he worked for me for a couple of months, but he ended up going back into his industry, which is HR, just because it paid significantly better than I did. And yeah, I don't know. So looking back at that, what should you have done instead if you were giving advice to your younger self? And I understand we all learn valuable things from all experiences and so on, but what, what, what should you have done instead? Or what advice would you have given? What would,

what advice would you give to someone in that same situation where they're like, I need somebody else, but I don't know what to do. Yeah. I, I wouldn't have hired a friend. Um, and I know a lot of other business owners that feel the same way. It's not for everybody. I mean, I'm sure some people can make it work, but it was very difficult for me because I ended up having to just have uncomfortable conversations and stuff, and it kind of hurt the friendship a little bit.

So I did that wrong. And then if I were going to go back and do it again, I would have, there are a couple of options that are available now that weren't really available a couple of years ago, um, that I've, that have worked out really well for me. So yeah, like what, there are a lot of job boards out there now for people who are looking for remote work like a lot of job boards and are there any are there any that you yeah i have a favorite one what is that it's called dynamite jobs and the website's dynamitejobs.co there's no m the guy that wanted the dot com wanted too much money probably um yeah so full, this is run by some friends of mine.

But it's for people who are looking for apprenticeships or jobs where they're giving a meaningful role. They're not just clocking in and doing the 9 to 5 type of thing. This is for people who they want to work remotely, they want to learn things, and they're able to, a lot of them choose to live in Southeast Asia because the cost of living is so low that they're high quality, they're affordable, and they also want to work for companies that are doing interesting things. And so I've gone through and I've looked at a lot of jobs that are on there and I'm like,

Hey, this would have been like amazing for me. Like before I started this entrepreneurship thing, I totally would have done that. Um, there's another one called remotive.io and then we work remotely is another one. I have heard about that one.

Yeah. There's all sorts of like niche ones. So like if you're a programmer or if you're just a customer service person, or if you want to work in content marketing, that type of thing, then there are a lot of niche job boards for opportunities like that. Were there any resources, books, or otherwise that eventually helped you to learn to be more effective as a manager? Yeah, the one that comes to mind instant, like the instant you said that, was one that I only read like a couple months ago.

I wish I picked it up sooner because it's really short. It's called the One Minute Manager. They have a new one. It's called the New One Minute Manager. What is new about it? It's kind of updated for organizations that are not as,

they don't have as much hierarchy. It's more for like, you know, 2018 businesses where they're like more flat. Yeah. This book has come up a fair amount and what's nice about it is that it's very short. I mean, it is very, very, very digestible as opposed to some of these other books on management

that are like university textbooks. And I think people just drown in the information. You mentioned hiring a friend as being probably a mistake or something that in your particular circumstances would have been a mistake. What are any other mistakes that come to mind that you made in the first year or two? You're like, you know what, if I were advising someone, I would probably do that differently. I didn't outsource the whole paid traffic thing soon enough. Like that, that's a very brain intensive task, like dumping a bunch of data into Excel and analyzing it and finding out what keywords were performing and which ones weren't.

I let that go on autopilot for far too long. And it probably cost me a lot of money, like just six or seven months after I started my business. But I was so inundated with all these menial tasks that I didn't go back to the thing that was actually making me money, which was like all of the paid traffic that was coming in. And so I would have outsourced that like significantly sooner to somebody who really, really knew what they were doing. How would you have found that person or that company?

Probably through referrals. Most of the stuff that I do now and companies that I hire, I usually hear about from other business owners. How do you meet those business owners? You go to a lot of events. What types of events? So it's not just events. This isn't a kind of, I'm asking because this is a very common question where I hear from people who say, I would love to do X, but I can't find like-minded people, which I think may be a cop out because they're certainly out there. It's really easy to say that when you're first starting out. But there are people out there, like a lot of people out there, that are doing interesting

things that you want to be a part of, and they're willing to let you in on that world. And so let's talk about going to events first. Yeah. So there are conferences that you can go to for pretty much any industry that you're interested in. I mostly go to e-commerce related conferences where there's people who are selling stuff online. That's the thing that we have in common. I don't go to any industry events for like spy gear or surveillance stuff. I used to, but I don't really like it. The e-commerce events are really helpful because most people there are

willing to share what they know and they're excited about it. And they're not concerned about people stealing their idea quotes. They're not worried about that sort of thing. They're in their business. They're already running big teams. They're looking to grow even further. And e-commerce is changing pretty constantly. There's always new things to try.

And everybody's always concerned about what Amazon's doing and how to counteract it. And so you go to these conferences where just other like-minded people are going to be, and you strike up conversations. And I have tips for conferences if you want to get at some point. You mentioned one or two conferences you've enjoyed for e-commerce and then tips for conferences. Because this is, people might be thinking, well, hold on a second. I just want to set up a business. This doesn't seem relevant.

It's really relevant or it's a way to fast track a lot of your learning. And this is also something that I've done at various points in my career whenever I've wanted to take a new path

is to spend time at conferences. So yeah, could you mention a few conferences that you've enjoyed and then what your playbook is? Sure. When I first started in 2014, the conference that really kicked things off for me was Internet Retailer. It's an annual event in Chicago. It's a big one. Yeah, it's huge. I actually don't go to it anymore because it kind of feels like a corporate getaway. There's huge companies there like Walmart.com and just BH Photo Video. These huge companies that I have nothing that I can relate to. And a lot of the sessions are more for like, you know, enterprise type of clients,

but they do have beginner related stuff. You do get to go to the exhibit hall where they have all sorts of software vendors who are providing services that you can use to run your e-commerce website or your customer service or your logistical needs like shipping and you strike up conversations and the exhibitor booths and you get introduced to people it's really cool um so that was really helpful when i first started um the the one that i went to and i was like i can never miss this event ever again is a conference called, it's a private community of location independent store owners. So people who are Tim Ferriss wannabes, basically. So it's called, I mentioned the job board earlier. It's called Dynamite Circle. And they have an

annual event in Bangkok each year, each October. And it's really cool. They get about 300 entrepreneurs. And we rent out the Conrad Hotel in Bangkok. And it's like summer camp for people who are doing business online and working from their computers and managing remote teams. And it's just like a five or six day event.

And it's really cool. You meet so many people just hanging out in the lobby. That's my number one tip for anybody who goes to a conference is actually stay at the conference hotel. It's going to cost more money, but there's all sorts of serendipitous events that happen when you're just hanging out in the lobby or sitting at the bar and you start talking to somebody and all of a sudden you realize that you have a lot in common or there's something that you guys can work on together and business deals happen. It's really cool.

Any other tips for conferences? It's really tempting to stay out and drink at night and stay out until like 2 a.m. But then by the time you get back to your hotel at 3 a.m., you don't want to go to the session that's starting at like 8 or 9 a.m. So I would probably just advise that you should probably call it a night at like midnight and then actually attend the conference in the morning. That's a lesson I am always learning. There's a conference here. We're sitting in Austin, Texas. It's called South by Southwest every year,

which is where, for our work, we actually had one of its very first tipping points in 2007. And I've come back pretty much every year since. And for those people who are interested in why I value conferences for certain things and how I approach it. Uh, you could just look for how to build a world-class network. And my name, I actually think I did, I put out audio on the podcast about how I approach it. But one quick tip would be, well, I'll give you two quick tips. The first is that

pay attention. If there are panels, pay attention to the moderators because very often after a session, all of the panelists will get rushed and the moderator will just be left there cold by themselves. That represents an easier person to talk to. And by the way, if they're moderating the panel, they know all of the panelists. So be nice, be curious, and connect with moderators, not just panelists. The second is, if you are going to be one of those hundred people rushing the stage to try to get a word in edgewise with person X, don't try to get a word in edgewise. Well, maybe just a few words, which is, I wrote you this note. I know you're super slammed right now, but if you could read it, I think you might find

it interesting. That's it. Do your thinking and your pitching on paper and give it to them for later because nobody does that. Even though I've recommended this, still probably one out of 100 people will do it. Next to no one does it. And more often than not, they will stick it in their pocket. And then when they're having coffee or a meal later, they'll be like, what the hell is this

in my pocket? Oh, it's a note. Let me read it. So those would be two recommendations. I want to come back to sort of the beginnings for a moment. Since we talked about fear setting, but we didn't talk about dreamlining or lifestyle goals. What were some of the goals that you had for your life and or the business when you first got going? What did success potentially look like to you? I tried finding my dream lines.

I think I tore them out of here at some point. I know I have them. But I remember thinking that if I could make $30,000 a year, that I'd be okay. And my wife wouldn't leave me, and I could pay my bills. Because dual income. So together we would have been fine.

By myself, $30,000 probably wouldn't have been all that great. But if I can make $30,000 a year, then all of this will have been worthwhile. I'll have time to pursue stuff that interested me. Like I was still really interested in playing music. Yeah, I just remember $30,000 being just the number that I needed to hit. And you arrived at that just by crunching your expenses

and figuring out... Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Burn rate. Yeah, exactly. So I did the whole targeted monthly income exercise. I wrote out my short-term goals goals i can't remember the exact links but like what do i want six weeks from now and then like three yes six months 12 months exactly yeah and so some of it was like what am i what am i doing what am i having like owning that sort of thing. And so I can remember some of the things on there were like,

I want 8% body fat. I want 8% body fat. I want to be able to have conversational Spanish skills so I could talk to my grandma in Spanish. I wanted a really cool leather jacket that I could pass down to my kid one day because I never had a really cool jacket and I used to wear my dad's in high school. Just stuff like that. Those are all great.

Those are all great. For people wondering also, you don't have to buy the 4-Hour Workweek to see this type of sheet. If you just search Tim Ferriss Dreamlining, all of this stuff is available for free on the blog as well. So you set out these things. Did you check off some of those items on the to be, to have, to do? I'm certain I did.

I don't remember all of them offhand, but I do remember doing the exercise pretty pretty regularly. Like I'd want to say like once a year. Do you have a leather jacket yet? You certainly have the money for it now. So here's the deal. I thought that, uh, I know I didn't hit the 8% body fat and I was just going through this weird time where I'm like, wait, I gotta like really bulk up first. And then I got to buy a leather jacket. Otherwise I'm going to get stuck with two leather jacket. I don't know, I kind of reasoned myself out of the whole leather jacket thing. But maybe I should go grab one while I'm down here. This is a great town for leather goods, actually. You know,

Elaine, you suggested a couple of questions that I think are really worth exploring. Do you want to perhaps bring this one up? Because I am very curious to hear the answer. Sure. Yeah. I was wondering, a lot of the internet stores that I interview are on Amazon. You're not, right? Tell us about your thinking on that. Well, there are a couple ways that I've approached this. And the first reason was because I was afraid of the really high return rates getting me in trouble with Amazon. So it's my understanding, and this could be outdated, but I'm pretty sure that once you get over a 10% return rate, then Amazon just kind of penalizes you. They can remove the listing entirely.

And so I remember from previous experience that a lot of times my products were just too technical for some users. Or the bigger one was that I was afraid that somebody was going to use my products for whatever they needed. Like I need this capture on video, right on an event basis. Exactly. And Amazon is like a 30 day return policy or whatever. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's like enough time for somebody to use this product, get all of the value they needed out of it and then send it back. And then I'm like totally burned by it. And so I was able to mitigate that by having, you know, my own store where I could set my own return policy and not have to worry about it.

Amazon also eats into the margins a little bit. And I also was worried about, it was mostly a fear-based thing. Yeah, for sure, for not selling on Amazon. I knew I could make it work on my own. And then Amazon just seemed like a little bit of an issue that I wasn't ready to take on. At least that's when I first started the business. Now, like many things, I start seeing things in different ways. And so I do see Amazon as like

a sales channel that I can be taking advantage of. And so I'm trying to figure out how best to approach that. I'd really like to start manufacturing my own products. And that way I'm not having to compete with other people for the same exact item. So that's one of the other reasons I was worried that I'd list the item on Amazon and then all of a sudden you have six or seven other people attaching themselves to the listing also saying that they are selling this item, which I'm not entirely sure that they are. It could be like a counterfeit or a copycat or something like that. And then you're all fighting for the buy box. It just seemed like something I didn't want on my plate, and I knew I could make it work without it.

Have you started doing any manufacturing? I think you had mentioned you were exploring that. Yeah. So production line hasn't started yet, but I did find an industrial designer who lives here in Austin and we've been working on some products together. And I've also found an engineer that is making the PCBs design for me. So that's printed circuit board. And it's been a hard road. I mean, there's a reason why people don't, if you're trying to get into fulfilled by Amazon businesses, the rule one is don't sell electronics.

It's hard. And so I'm not technical. It's been a really hard road figuring out how electronics worked. What are the costs? Oh, some of the stuff comes out defective and I got to deal with that and then you got to communicate with factories in china because they're that's like the hub for everything

electronics these days and it's just been really difficult to figure out i think i'm getting there but we do have products designed i want to sell them under the spy guy brand and then be in control of the actual product that we're making. It's been kind of a pain being at the mercy of the manufacturer, because sometimes they don't, orders take too long, or they jack up your prices, and it just kind of feels like they have you over a barrel. So I'm looking to actually start manufacturing my own items, yes. What are some of the tools that you've found helpful for running your business or automating certain things? I mean, you mentioned live chat,

for instance, which was starting way back in the day. Yes. Way back in the day, meaning not all that long ago, I guess, in terms of humans on the planet, but in entrepreneurship years, a long time. What are some of the technologies or tools that you currently use that you find very helpful? Sure. So Shopify is just the hub of everything that we do. And that's what talks to everything else, pretty much. It's fantastic.

It makes life so much easier than when I was on... I used to work at a company and we were using Yahoo Store. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It hasn't changed. It hasn't changed since you used it. So Shopify is the hub of everything that we do. It collects all of the data and we base all of our decisions off of it. We have another tool that's really helpful called Help Scout. It is a ticket software so that you're not just in Gmail all day. It makes it really easy for customers to contact you and for you to give them the exact experience that your customer needs. So if they email you asking for a refund or a return,

then you have canned responses that you can key in, and you can assign tickets. So if a customer's like, hey, I talked to Dale the other day. I'd really like it if you could help me with this issue. Then you can move that ticket into his inbox, and then he can manage it. And you can see the entire history of the customer's profile. Like you can see everything that they've done in Shopify also appears in Help Scout. So you can see the orders that they've placed. You can see if they've been refunded. So you can do all of your customer service stuff just within Help Scout and not having to like open a new window and go to Shopify. So that's really good for streamlining things.

One of my biggest wins was using a shipping software called Shipping Easy. There's another one that's out there called ShipStation that is also popular. I think ShipStation, I might be getting this wrong, I feel like they might be based here in Austin. They are. So Shipping Easy. Really? Yeah. I wonder why that is.

They're owned by the same company oh wow yeah they're all like the gucci and then the other one's like the the the more affordable i think that's kind of it yeah well hey so they started as two separate ones and then they were both bought by stamps.com which also also owns Indesha. I don't know. They have like a monopoly on the post office and I'm not sure how that works. It's really weird. Um, but the shipping software is incredible because an order will come through on our Shopify website and then it gets synced to shipping easy so that a label is automatically generated. So what we've done is we have a set of automation rules. So Shipping Easy knows how much each item weighs,

what envelope or box the item will be shipped out in based on the total order weight and the shipping method that the customer selected. So if they did free ground shipping, then it's probably going to go out first-class mail. But if they selected two-day shipping, then it's probably going to go out first class mail. But if they selected two day shipping, then it's probably going to go out like FedEx one rate, or, you know, we have a million different combinations that are in there. And it's really easy to set up so that like within a minute of a customer placing an order on the website, a shipping label is generated. And we know exactly what envelope it's going to go into and what products and is does

that then presumably the orders get shipped out of a fulfillment center at this point and not out of we have an office now oh you have an office yeah and we have all of our inventory at the office i had tried doing the 3pl thing it was a total disaster um i i know other people who it works great for them they're typically only have like a handful of skews yeah and i think that makes it easier we have like closer to 100 and we had a lot of issues with um the 3pl with wrong orders getting sent out that was actually like one of the most stressful periods ever because i thought my business was going to implode customers getting wrong orders wanting to cancel them,

filing chargebacks all the time. It was very frustrating. So we have an office now, and I have a full-time fulfillment guy who comes in in the morning. And he's really the only employee I have that has to go to an office. And he'll pack the orders, and then we don't have to drive to the post office. We're important enough now that the post office and FedEx will come by the office and pick up

from us twice a day. You know, you're, you're mentioning the, the 3PL and the fulfillment houses. I got a call. I don't know if I've ever talked about this before. This is why actually it wasn't a call. It was an email. one of the less pleasant emails i've ever received which was i was running my my sports nutrition business way back in the day a thousand years ago it feels like and i was in bratislava traveling with two friends and i was off email for a period of time as one might expect if they read the first book and i i went into my inbox just to check in for a few minutes and there was an email from from one of the managers at the Fulfillment Center who said, the president or the owner who had become a friend of mine, it's very sad, had died of a heart

attack. His family has never wanted to be in this business. And the entire facility is being closed down. You need to have all your inventory out in the next seven days. But I had received it probably five days after the email had been sent. That was a very exciting 48 to 72 hours, to put it mildly. So yeah, there are pros and cons to all of these different approaches. I knew it wasn't going to work out with my 3PL when probably a week after we started with them, I was getting text messages from the fulfillment center owner. He was fulfilling the orders himself. Oh, no. And he was texting me photos of products saying, is this this item?

Oh, God. It was a disaster. Yeah. Now, you mentioned the manufacturing, for instance. How do you think about blocking out time for big picture decisions and product development and things like that? Do you have an approach to blocking that out in your calendar?

Is it a certain amount of time you block out each week? How do you think about any of that? Because there are the incremental improvements that can be made, right? Like we can improve or we can work with consultants or people we've hired to improve, let's say, paid advertising or organic or supply chain or whatever it might be. So there are these things that you could try to incrementally improve. And then there is, you know, what is the future of this business look like three years from now?

Yeah. How have you approached that? So have you heard of traction by any chance? I know the word traction. It's probably not a book. Okay. There's a book. There's also another one called Scaling Up by Vern.

Yeah, Vern. Verlaine, you know? Harnish, right? Yes. Yeah, they're both ways of running your company. I guess the way that Traction explains it is it's, you know, your phone has an operating system, your computer does too, and so should your business.

And we've started working on that a little bit, and they have this concept of, like of rocks, sand, pebbles. Right, yes. And so sand is just the incremental stuff. Pebbles is a little more important than that. And then the rocks are like, what are the things that are really going to make your business awesome? If you can implement this stuff,

what are the things that are just going to make it really take off? And I haven't read the book, but just so people get the visual, the idea being if you have, say, a mason jar, if you put in the sand first, you can fit in a few pebbles, you can definitely not fit the rocks. But if you put the rocks in first, then the pebbles, then the sand fits around it. Exactly. And so this is something that I've been looking at for like the last month or so, really not that long. But I also read a book called The One Thing that has been really, really helpful for me. I find that I tend to be pretty scatterbrained. There's always small stuff

that I kind of, small stuff pops up on my radar and I'm like, oh, I can knock this out like real quickly. And then before you know it, like 40 minutes have gone by. And then my wife wants me to get lunch with her. And then I'm like, I've barely even done anything today. I can't like stop and get lunch right now. And you're putting out fires all day and stuff. And then before you know it, the day's over and you haven't done anything at all. So with the one thing, it's like, what's the one thing that you can do that makes everything else easier or just entirely obsolete? And so I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Like, I should really be manufacturing my own products right now.

Why? Because my margins are going to go up. Because I'm not as, like, fragile with my manufacturers. Like, we had a bug detector that was mentioned on the Today Show last November. And we sold out of all our bug detectors like instantly. And we couldn't even keep them in stock for like another three months. And I'm like, this is terrible. I could have predicted this. I should be manufacturing my own items. So I've got, you know, 1000, 2000 in the warehouse.

So if something like this happens, I can account for it. And I'm not at the mercy of other people. And Alan, out of the 100 products, how do you know which ones to manufacture first? Are they the ones that sell the most? Or is there some other criteria? The ones that sell the most are the ones where, like I have a vendor that's really unpleasant to deal with, but I have to sell some of the stuff that they have. And so now I'm like, all right,

how can I cut them out? And so that's the first product that I started developing. And then I also have, um, a couple of products that customers have asked for, but I haven't, none of my suppliers are providing it. And so I'm like, all right, this could be a real opportunity here. And so that's actually going to be one of the first items that I manufacture. And do you aim for the ones that would be bought by the enterprise clients? I know you work with some government clients. We do. But most of our customers are just regular people that have something going on. They own a business and something's getting stolen and they need to

find out who. Or they're getting political signs stolen from their yard and they want to find out who's doing that so all sorts of like crazy reasons um many it's really hard to find our customers on facebook ads because there's like no demographic for people who need surveillance equipment but um yeah they're just regular people but we do have like private investigators and law enforcement so it's always fun like seeing order come in on the website and it's like from department of justice or something like that that's always fun but to get those big orders from them you have to like do government contracts requests for proposals and it's more involved yeah rfqs and uh let me think we we get emails all the time from people who

are set up as like government suppliers i guess is the term yeah they're like yeah we need 2 000 bug detectors and we need them at your lowest possible price and then we get those emails like all at the same time when you when you made the news the time um that you helped catch the child molester, did that help your sales? I mean, what effect does that have? So do you want me to tell the story? Yeah, well, let's, yeah, I want, and tie that into also the Today Show,

because I'm curious how both of these things happened. But let's talk about the child predator first. Okay. And tell us the story of how that happened. All right, so. child predator first. Tell us the story of how that happened. Then to Elaine's point, if it had an impact on sales. Sure. I remember getting a message.

We use Slack to communicate within the team. I guess that's also a big... I remember getting a message from my employee vince and he's like hey we had something weird happen just now and i kind of want to alert you to it i'm like okay what's up and he goes we had a live chat come in and it's from somebody asking about a particular customer and i told them that we can't give them any information on this customer we don't just tell you know random people on live chat about our customers and what they're ordering. I think that's a good policy.

So that's exactly what my employee told the live chat visitor. And then the live chat guy goes, oh, okay. I am with the district attorney's office in, I guess it's Sherwood or Portland area in Oregon. And we think that this guy bought a hidden camera from you. And we found this hidden camera in the boy's bathroom of the Catholic church where he is a priest. And my employee's like, okay, send us like a subpoena or a warrant or whatever it is that they ask for, and we can, you know, we have to give you that information, and so my employee tells me this, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is not what I needed today, and my employee goes,

I looked him up, and he did buy the hidden camera from us. And I'm like, okay, we have to, we can't just like sit on this. We have to hand this information over. And so at the time I was reading, trust me, I'm lying by Ryan Holiday. There's a lot of Austin tie in here. Austin Board of Tourism. You know where to send the roses. So that is his first book, and it blew my mind when I read it.

It's all about the media and how they work and how you can use it to your advantage and then also to your detriment if you don't play by the rules. And I was reading it at the time, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I could totally see this headline ending up on gawker which isn't around anymore but catholic priest installs hidden camera in boy's bathroom just like yeah screams gawker and then they'd probably mention my store or something like that and then everything i worked for was going to be like you know ruined um and so or you'd have a giant influx of priests as new customers there's your facebook advertising i'm kidding

go ahead so bad uh and so i'm like okay we got to get we got to get the police department um this information they had a detective that was working the case and they gave me their contact info. And, um, I'm like, okay, what can I do? What can I do? And so I actually do a Google search for the guy and I stumble across, um, articles that had been written about him already in the local newspaper up there. And the, the Oregonian was the name of the paper. And so they already had a reporter that was on this story and she had come out with like two to three different blog posts because it turned out that the the kid like found the camera and then reported it to his parents who then reported it to the priest who actually set up the camera and then he's like oh okay i'll

get this taken care of and then he never went to the police. And so the kid's parents are like, what is going on here? And so the police suspected that the priest was doing something. Anyways, the reporter that was working the article, I decided to reach out to her. And I decided to reach out to the detective that was working the case at the same time. And we kind of worked hand in hand to get the story out in a way that looked favorable for me. So she, you know,

the reporter for the paper was greatly appreciative that I contacted her with the scoop and allowed me to share my side of the story. And instead of making it seem like I was an accomplice to some guy that did like a terrible, we had never even spoken to this guy. He just placed the order on the website. He never called us on the phone, never did a live chat or send in an email.

It's just somebody that placed an order on the website and did something terrible. And so I was really worried that that would just destroy my business. And, um, we worked hand in hand with the police department. They ended up issuing a warrant for his arrest but he had already fled the country like a week prior he went back to the philippines

where he was from and when the story finally hit um it gave us a lot of publicity so like all of a sudden other newspapers were wanting to talk to me. And then TV stations were asking for Skype interviews and stuff. And it actually came out on the same day that Jared from Subway was arrested. And that took up the news for the entire day. Also, I think Anthony Scalia died, the Supreme Court justice. So the news was just flooded and the story just got buried. But that's... It happens.

What happens. Yeah, the media cycles and events are never predictable. I've had the great misfortune of, in the case of a few book launches, to just get completely drowned out, which is always one of those things that can happen. the case of a few book launches to just get completely drowned out uh which which uh is is always one of those things that can happen with the today show how did that come about so we weren't

mentioned do you know anything oh that was not mentioned specifically but you had the net to catch the fish on google right uh every week or so there's a story that comes out about somebody finding a hidden camera in an Airbnb or vacation rental. And they did a segment on that and how to find a hidden camera. And so they just generally mentioned a bug detector. And it turns out that Amazon sold out completely. And a lot of customers found our website after hitting Amazon and not being able to find anything in stock they came to our website and purchased all of our inventory and we were out for months it was horrible we had to cancel orders left and right and it was a difficult time was it more of

a problem than a blessing because some people listening might think wow you sold out of all your inventory so that can't be a bad thing. But do you wish it hadn't happened? Would it have been better for you if it had not happened? It was our biggest sales day of all time, and it still is. So that was really cool at the moment. But then for the three months after, I'm like, oh my gosh, what's taking so long? Factory's not being very responsive to me at all.

We have customers calling left and right. And a lot of them, we forgot to, like, mark it unorderable on the website. So customers were placing orders for it, even though it wasn't in stock. And so they were getting frustrated with us. And, yeah, it was a difficult time. I mean, I'm glad it happened. I just wish we had been prepared better, but you know, I'd say 2020. Yeah. Well, the, the mentioned by the today show is also one of those, uh, be careful what you wish for. Not that you were expecting it, but one of those, be careful what you wish for scenarios. And certainly back in the

day, maybe even still, you know, Oprah gave people the hug of death where she would mention a bakery or a company and they thought it was winning the lottery ticket, the winning lottery ticket. But in fact, it just ended up destroying the business because they would ramp up to try to do tons of manufacturing or hire extra people. And then a week later, they didn't know how to sort of reconcile what had just happened. What are some of the, well, we have, I think, just a little bit of time left. Some of the highlights, when you look back, right? So you were in this job, you were underpaid, overworked, really hating the nine to five or seven to seven, whatever the hours might have been, experience. You start this company. What have been some of the peak experiences or things that you couldn't have imagined would have come true that you couldn't have imagined at the time when you were like, man, if I can just make 30 grand, this will work out? So the first thing that comes to mind as I look

out of this amazing view of Austin is that I'm sitting here chatting with you right now. I mean, book was hugely influential to me and then a lot of my friends. So this has been an awesome experience. Meeting people who are like me has been the biggest impact on my life. Like, I kind of went through high school just like as a loner, and I didn't really have a lot of friends. And I was kind of like wandering around aimlessly. But starting this business up has exposed me to people who are just really cool and really interesting. And if we went to high school together, then we probably would have gotten along really well. It would have been awesome. And so seeking those people out and finding them.

And on Twitter, it's easier than ever. I can't remember who said it. I want to say it was Naval Ravikant. I think he had a tweet and he's like, Facebook is where you meet the people of your past and Twitter's where you meet the people of your future. And I'm like, holy crap, that is exactly what's happened to me. Like I've met so many amazing people on Twitter and you can have these great conversations without having to physically be near them at all. So meeting people through Twitter, meeting people at these events, other business owners who are just doing really cool stuff and are into personal development and fitness and entrepreneurship and just cool people even without that stuff. Like I enjoy being around them. So I've kind of been able to like find my tribe type of thing. I would imagine you also have quite a few people who come to you now, having seen what you've done,

friends, and maybe just people in these communities who want to get your advice. What do you say to those people who are maybe where you were some time ago, in the sense that they have a job, it's paying decently well, but they just dread Monday morning when it rolls around, going back in. What do you say to those people? Or what advice have you given them or would you give them so i actually don't get a whole lot of people asking for advice um i kind of like lay low i think yeah but the people who do reach out i give them a handful of books to read that were hugely we talked about some of them earlier i can name more later if you want but handful of books to read that were hugely, we talked about some of them earlier. I can name more later if you want.

But I tell them to read these books. If they have any questions, they can get back to me. I give them a list of podcasts that I listen to. What are some of those podcasts? So I've been a listener of Tim Ferriss' show for a long time, Tim Tim Talk Talk. I've known him. I appreciate that.

Thanks, Kevin Rose, for making that stick forever. Gotcha. I appreciate that. I'm sliding a 20 across the table. We had a deal ahead of time for this. What other podcasts? E-commerce Fuel. E-commerce Fuel.

Yes. And then Ecom Crew. Ecom Crew is my favorite e-commerce podcast. it's run by um a friend of mine named mike and he's been almost completely transparent with his e-commerce business it's a seven-figure e-commerce business um they do adult coloring books. Amazing. Wait, adult? No, meaning adult-themed content plus coloring or coloring books for adults? Coloring books for adults. Okay, all right. I've never thought about that.

Another growth opportunity. When I started my business... Very limited number of colors that you'd be using for the former brawlers. Maybe not a good idea. Go ahead. So, e-com crew, I would totally suggest to anybody who wants to start an online business

that's selling physical products, because they talk about factories, finding them, working with them, raising money, running an e-commerce store, and how to do Facebook ads correctly and make money from that. It's really cool stuff. About two months after I started my business, I learned about the Tropical MBA podcast. Again, terrible names usually mean mean the product's pretty good. But these are guys that do

entrepreneurship, Tim Ferristyle. And so they have a lot of really great episodes with people like me who are doing, maybe they'll do Fulfilled by Amazon businesses. So they'll find products, sell them only on Amazon, and then Amazon will actually ship it for them as businesses. So they'll find products, sell them only on Amazon,

and then Amazon will actually ship it for them as well. So they never have to physically handle the inventory, which sounds amazing to me. FBA sellers, they interview people who are running digital agencies, so paid ad campaigns on Google or Facebook, Instagram. They'll interview people who have like a small team and they'll be based like in the Philippines or in Thailand or something like that, running their business remotely for US clients. And it keeps costs low and they'll share with you

everything that they know, like how they stumbled into that niche. So you hear about people who are doing really interesting things and niches you've never known about. Like the guys that run that podcast sell valet podiums. I love it. They're like the number one distributor of valet podiums in the US. And so I remember being in Dallas getting a haircut a couple months ago and they had valet parking and i looked down at the thing and i see their logo on it and i just like crack up because these are guys that i found out about through the podcast who like lived in thailand at the time that's amazing and people are doing cool stuff

everywhere and plus they're just invisible stories around you constantly right it's like if you walk into i just recently learned this like the cardboard sleeves that hold coffee that you would get at a coffee shop, those are called zarfs. And there's a guy responsible for the most dominant zarfs in the United States, or not too long ago, I think it was in Idaho. And I ended up driving by this gigantic estate, this enormous ranch with multiple buildings and ponds and this. And I'm like, whose ranch is that? And they go, oh, you know, those little winglets that you see on the edges of airplane wings that point upwards. Like, yeah, he's the guy who made those, right? And you just, you never quite piece it together or you wouldn't think of it unless someone points

it out. Well, we're going to wrap up in just a few minutes here, but what are you hoping, say, next year, in the next 12 months, is there anything you most want to change or tackle for yourself? Could be related to the business, could just be overall. But I mean, you have what a lot of people would see as a dream, right? I mean, they, you have your own business. You are the, the maker of your own destiny in a lot of senses, you far surpassed $30,000 per year. Uh, so what, what are some things you're working on? You mentioned personal development. It could be with the business or it could be outside of the business, but what are you focused on these days? So the thing on my mind right now is I have a kid coming next month.

Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. Um, so I'm kind of interested to see how this will go, um, with the free time and being able to work on the business. And so I've really taken upon the task of building out my team and letting them carry more of the burden. Well, not a burden, but carry more of the weight. Because I can't do everything on my own anymore. It's impossible. And by building a team, I can have people that I depend on

to actually not just maintain the business, but I want them to help grow it. And figuring that out has been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of, you know, it's cool doing stuff on my own for a long time. I mean, that's how people typically see it. Like when they do entrepreneurship, it starts out with just them. But building out a team has been like life-changing for me because they can handle all the shipping and stuff so i don't have to i don't have to take a single customer call anymore if i don't want to sometimes i'll hear it ring and i'll snatch it before

somebody else does um but you know i could go months without taking a phone call if i really wanted to and that that's great um, so building out my team, figuring out how to factor in having a newborn baby into my life. Um, I think that's going to be really interesting. Uh, I, I love meeting other entrepreneurs and finding opportunities to, you know, have great conversations or like start a business together or help other people with their businesses. I get a lot of joy out of that. And so,

yeah, I've done the dreamlining thing and I'm like, all right, where do I want to be a year from now, five years from now. And I just really want to be helping people who are, you know, maybe where I was when they were like 18 or 22 or whatever.

Uh, if I can share some of the knowledge and point people in the right direction, then, uh, I think I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of that. I think you've done a lot of that today. So first and foremost, thank you for taking the time. This has been really fun. Of course, yeah. And Alan Walton, where can people find out more about you? Websites, if they want to ask a question or wave hello on Twitter or elsewhere, anything that you'd like to share, I would suggest against giving your personal email address.

Okay. So my business website is spyguy.com, S-P-Y-G-U-Y.com. I'm on Twitter. Give me a shout. It's at Alan Third. So A-L-L-E-N-T-H-I-R-D. And I have a personal site as well. There's not a whole lot on it at the moment, but maybe in the future. AlanWalton.com. Amazing. And Elaine, thank you for being here i know i was i was charging pretty hard for

most of this interview but i wanted to introduce you guys to elaine because i am hoping to do uh quite a bit more with you in the future so this is this is going to be uh an experiment as we collaborate via audio and hopefully in other ways. But I think this was a really fun outing. And Elaine did help with getting me up to speed on a lot of the basics so that I could ask questions that were informed. So thank you for that as well. Oh, thanks, Tim. It was great to be here. And it was really great to see how you looked at Alan's business. That was really fascinating for me. Well, I'm hoping that, and I'm sure you will, and I know you already are behind the scenes. So we have secrets coming for you guys, but you'll be shedding light for me on

quite a few people and businesses as well. So thank you, Alan. Thank you, Elaine. And to everybody listening, thank you for listening. And you can find show notes, links to everything that we discussed in the show notes as per usual, Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, maybe you should do some fear setting and dreamlining, uh, and certainly think about what experiments you want to run in the next year until next time. Bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again.

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