#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
Are you feeling stuck in life, wanting to grow, improve your income, or build a stronger community? Join performance coach Jordan Edwards as he interviews world-class achievers—including the Founder of Reebok and the Co-Founder of Priceline—who share their success stories and actionable strategies. Each episode provides practical tips on how to boost your personal and professional growth, helping you implement changes that can make a real difference in your life.
This podcast is designed for anyone looking to make progress—whether you're aiming to improve your mindset, relationships, health, or income. Jordan distills the wisdom of top performers into easy-to-follow steps you can take immediately. Whether you're stuck in your career or personal life, you’ll find new ways to get unstuck and start moving forward with confidence.
How to get unstuck? It’s a question many face, and in each episode, you’ll hear stories of how successful individuals broke through barriers, found purpose, and created systems to overcome obstacles. From building resilience to developing a success mindset, you'll gain insights into how high achievers continue to evolve and grow.
Looking to improve your income? This podcast also dives into financial strategies, offering advice from entrepreneurs and business leaders who have built wealth, created multiple revenue streams, and mastered the art of financial growth. Learn how to increase your income, find opportunities for advancement, and create value in both your personal and professional life.
Jordan also emphasizes the importance of building community. You'll learn how to expand your network, foster meaningful connections, and create supportive environments that contribute to personal and professional success. From philanthropists to community leaders, guests share their experiences in building impactful, values-driven communities.
At the core of the podcast are the 5 Pillars of Edwards Consulting—Mental Health, Physical Health, Community Service/Philanthropy, Relationships, and Spirituality. Each episode integrates these elements, ensuring a holistic approach to self-improvement. Whether it's enhancing your mental and physical well-being, giving back to your community, or strengthening your relationships, you'll receive actionable advice that’s grounded in real-world success.
This podcast is for everyone—whether you're an entrepreneur, a professional looking to advance, or simply someone seeking personal growth. You’ll gain actionable steps from every conversation, whether it’s about increasing your productivity, improving your health, or finding more purpose in your life.
Jordan’s interviews are designed to be perspective-shifting, giving you the tools and inspiration to transform your life. From overcoming obstacles to building stronger habits, these episodes are packed with practical insights you can use today. Whether you're looking to grow in your career, improve your income, or enhance your personal life, you’ll find value in every conversation.
Join Jordan Edwards and a lineup of incredible guests for thought-provoking conversations that will inspire you to take action, improve your performance, and unlock your full potential. No matter where you are on your journey, this podcast will help you get unstuck, grow, and build a life filled with purpose and success.
#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards
#237 - Mastering E-Commerce with Purpose
Is e-commerce still viable in today's economic climate? According to Neil Twa, CEO of Voltage Holdings which manages more than 21 brands, the answer is an emphatic yes. With Amazon showing consistent 13% annual growth and container shipping costs dropping significantly, Neil is doubling down on his e-commerce investments for 2025, seeing tremendous opportunity on the horizon.
Throughout this enlightening conversation, Neil shares his remarkable journey from IBM corporate life to e-commerce entrepreneurship. After witnessing a colleague miss important family moments, Neil made the radical decision to prioritize time with his family over traditional career advancement. This shift in priorities led him to experiment with mobile marketing, affiliate marketing, and eventually physical products on Amazon—discovering a systematic approach to e-commerce success that contradicts conventional wisdom.
The most surprising revelation? Neil doesn't see himself as selling products to customers. "I sell data to AI engines," he explains, detailing how his company tests multiple product variations with small batch runs (100-500 units) to discover which data sets resonate most with Amazon's algorithms. This contrarian approach minimizes risk while maximizing learning opportunities—a strategy that helped him build multiple seven-figure brands after realizing that controlling both the marketing and the product was essential for sustainable growth.
Beyond business strategies, Neil shares his "Five Profits" philosophy that places faith, family, friends, and freedom above financial gain. Living on 50 acres with his homeschooled family, he's created a life that aligns with his values while building a thriving e-commerce empire. For anyone feeling trapped in their current circumstances, Neil offers this perspective-shifting advice: "Change your language from 'I can't' to 'I won't'—everything we do is a choice."
Want to learn more about building purposeful e-commerce businesses? Visit VoltageDM.com for free training resources or to grab a copy of Neil's strategy guide for combining purpose, value, and profits in your business and life.
To Learn more about Neil:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neiltwa
To Reach Jordan:
Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/
Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.
Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call
Hey, what's going on, guys? We've got a special guest here today. We have Neil Twa. He's the CEO of Voltage Holding, which manages more than 21 brands, nine which they directly own. Neil, we're excited to have you on the Hashtag Clocked In podcast. How did you get into the e-com space and is it viable today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, is e-com viable today? Great question, and thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I get to have fun on these and I think we'll have some fun today. I hope so.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the the affect of that question comes around, you know, usually risk management Is it. Is it something I should get into? Should I risk money? Should I rinse time, energy, attention? You know maybe the four factors of any kind of business decision around time and team effort. And the answer for me is yes, wholeheartedly. In fact, I'm doubling down.
Speaker 2:We're acquiring companies, we're going bold into the market this year because I honestly believe that there's a pivotable that's a great word, pivotable, I have to get it out move happening in 2025. That I think. If you look at it from like a 30, 50,000 foot view, you can kind of see it. If you're down in the trenches, if you're down in the daily grind, if you're trying to get paycheck to paycheck, if you're doing these kinds of things which I get, by the way, because I've been there and being bankrupt and having no money is not a lot of fun we can talk about that if you want, but the end result is I've been at that daily grind and it's hard to see the analogy, of course, the forest or the trees.
Speaker 2:And since I'm now able to step back at things and look at kind of more of an overarching perspective and kind of envision and think forward and do projections for our business and what we're doing with our time and money and stuff, I look at it and I say, okay, where is the year for e-comm? Where are we headed? All the markets predict we should go up. All the indicators of year-to-date sales from 2024 are all up. People are like, well, nobody has money. Well, somebody's buying something because they bought a lot of stuff last year and they bought more than they did the year before.
Speaker 2:So with that, we're seeing about an average on the Amazon channel which of course is different than other channels about 13% growth every year and that's a low. On the Amazon side. We'll see higher in certain brands year over year. Growth and organic growth is going pretty fast. And so I look at the social and geo-economics. I have to kind of keep tariffs and keep an eye on those things for products and things in motion, Trying to make sure that if we see certain indicators, like we saw in 2019, that we can avoid and prepare for certain major changes in supply chain.
Speaker 2:In 2020, we had containers that were like 4,800 per 40-foot container in the fourth quarter of 2019 jumped to 25,000 in the first quarter of 2020. So with that occurrence massive changes and shifts people are like, well, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs and I'm like dude, tariffs aren't going to run us from 48 to. Actually the container costs have all gone down. They've gone down dramatically. Right, we're down to like $2,000 to $3,000 per container right now, not up. So people are screaming tariffs and costs because some people are operating at margin and I totally get that and with that from a business versus personal perspective, from a business perspective.
Speaker 2:I'm bullish on 2025.
Speaker 2:I'm bullish about the businesses, the opportunity, the indicators that onshore manufacturing is going up, the ability for certain cash flow is being freed up, Certain economic conditions are changing with our environment.
Speaker 2:It seems like it's chaotic, but there also seems to be a concerted effort to try to stop spending in one direction, which is going to maximize output for people's personal finances. So, again, as I see these changes and reciprocal tariff engagements occurring, what it means at the short end of that stick is that our products are going to reach more people in the world. Where we have not been able to send certain products and opportunities out into the world because the tariffs ate most of the profit and it was because certain countries wanted to stop America from making manufacturing opportunities occur. So we haven't been able to export those products, so manufacturing onshore disappeared. And as those things occur, and as people are now being bullish in the manufacturing space, so we haven't been able to export those products, so manufacturing onshore disappeared. And as those things occur, and as people are now being bullish in the manufacturing space and opportunities for capital growth are showing up, there is nothing but opportunity on the horizon as far as I can see.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it's causing us to. And this is all because of the administration right.
Speaker 2:It's a hope. The effect of what they're doing hasn't really slung totally into the economy yet. You can see that it's building, but that's I mean, we have such a giant machine of industry with GDP and things. We haven't quite seen the effects of that hit the bottom line yet. We haven't seen it in the cost of eggs, we haven't seen it in other things. We haven't seen it in other things. We haven't seen it yet quite in the supply chain. But I I honestly feel like it's that rubber band pulling back and it's just pulling back. Every day they find junk. Every day they're holding people accountable. Every day we see things changing. That's creating a hope, an overall hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's dissension and of course, don't dive into the comment sections on facebook or tick tock, unless you want to come out taking a shower and feeling all slimy. Yeah, because your friends and family are hating on you. You know I lost a friend the other day. Hey, goodbye, neil. You know I just can't. You know you're not the guy I thought you were. Okay, well, that's cool. You know, don't just go writing people off because you don't agree with their opinion. The fact of the matter is there's a lot of unknowns, but we can definitely see, as there's opportunity was putting hope into the market and if that's occurring because of the administrations changes, great, it could be anybody. Frankly, it does that, it's just. Is it a positive net effect? And we haven't quite seen it yet, but I think it's coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, because a lot of things will happen there and then you'll see it six, 12 months down the line. It'll come down.
Speaker 2:It's always going to take a little time for it to trickle backwards. You know, we may give you some of this money back and that's cool. Personally, I'd rather just pay down all the debt, but then again I'm not at margin. Ask me that you know 15 years ago, and I'd probably say give me the check, I'll take the money. Please, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, opportunity. There's always opportunity in a down market. A hundred percent. So for you. I know you were at ibm, I was, and then you decided to start your own business. I heard the man how did you think about that? And how can other people today who might be not having a business or not anything obviously it was years ago, but how can they think about that process?
Speaker 2:because we've talked about people have a birthday next week, but that sounds like it was a dig on how old I was.
Speaker 1:It was a long time ago, neil, way back, you know well, my point being is that you've been running for 17 years and it's been very successful. Yeah, well, 17 years feels like a long time.
Speaker 2:I know, I'm just joking. Um, 17 years is a long time. However, I look up and I'm like I have to look at that number and go, wow, that is actually kind of a long. I hadn't really put that in perspective because it went really fast. I had kids and didn't sleep for a decade, so that helped. Um, yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:So the 2007,. You know, I it was, it is. It wasn't just a decision to leave that year and be like I'm done with this, I'm fed up. It was a culmination of activities that occurred. One I never wanted to go to college in the first place, I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
Speaker 2:College was a fallback position when I got rejected by the Air Force because I couldn't fit in the cockpit of the F-16 and they couldn't close it. So I'm like, well, dang it, I'm out. I had a friend who I found discovered about six months ago Turns out we've become good friends because of this. He went to the Air Force too, but he was rejected from a cockpit to go to the Air Force because his legs were too long and so he jammed into the deck. He could fit in one direction, I couldn't fit the other. So it's a funny story. So I went to college. I didn't want to go there, failed out three times, got reinstated. I'm like I don't want to be here, like I was there on music and ride and I just didn't want to be in college. Well, the internet came online and saved my life to 80 000 employees in five years I was there. Hyper growth was like mobile phones, like crazy, which is cool. That led me to ibm, but I didn't really want to be there either, because I never wanted to be in the corporate world. I wanted to be, you know, independent, being business, this kind of stuff. And what ended up happening was kind of a critical moment.
Speaker 2:I had an uncle who we call him my rich dad, because my poor dad, who's still alive he's not really poor poor. He isn't poor in money, he's not poor in spirit. Dude's 82, heart is a rock. He's a two-time Vietnam veteran. He's just incredible. He's a horrible guy but he's gone soft with four granddaughters so I like to tease him about it. But he was just a hardworking, suck it up, buttercup kind of guy. But he didn't know anything about finances. He knew about hard work and that's awesome because it taught me a lot about hard work and tenacity and perseverance and doing things for yourself and for others and helping people. It's just always helping people. I mean, get under cars in cold weather and fix their cars.
Speaker 1:He's a good guy.
Speaker 2:But he didn't buy money. So my uncle happened to be someone who was more entrepreneurial. His family was more entrepreneurial. He started a boat company in San Diego and I got to see that process and kind of grow as a younger man. Through the process he mentored me for a while. Unfortunately, he died in an aircraft accident in 2005. And so I lost him during that kind of period when I was at IBM thinking it was time to leave and it took me about two years to finally pull the trigger and IBM pulled the trigger at the same time.
Speaker 2:I did so when they came for early retirement in 2007 and I was ready to go. It just worked out perfectly and I said go, this is my opportunity. And we all have those moments If we're in a job or we're not in a job, if we're in a situation. We see those pivots. Sometimes we get past them three miles down the road and look back and go oh yeah, we should have turned back there. That was my moment. I didn't want to miss that. So I'm like'm like, I'm never going back. That's the end, and I set that in my mind that, no matter what, I was never going back to the corporate world.
Speaker 2:It's not what I wanted and so I set off into do management consulting, built a little practice up, figured out I was still trading time for money. This was just kind of a connection of the self-employed world, another level of risk and reward. My uncle again, who had died, had opened my mind to the idea of business and really planted a seed that grew quite fast in a couple of years and it was one of the things I knew that I was always going to end up doing. I just didn't forget how and I couldn't quite honestly tell you that I would have got to this point if I had tried to plan it 17 years ago. I think people try to plan into the very future of things and I'm like, dude, if you could see three to five years forward, if you could see two years forward, heck, at this point, if you can get yourself a year forward in your thinking and just be like where could I be one year from now, you're doing pretty good because things are moving so fast.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. I've been doing this podcast for probably four years now and everybody I talk to we were never talking about AI. Now every single person comes on and they're like AI, ai, this tech, and it's moving exponentially quicker.
Speaker 2:So keep up with it. Yeah, the drop three war versus now the the GDP four war, and it's like, well, they just keep innovating towards AGI and pretty soon we're just going to, like, race ourselves off a cliff of of sentient artificial intelligence, and we all know how that goes. I've seen the movies. Right, we all know we're racing for our lives across the, you know, desolate apocalypse landscape, trying to avoid the terminators like. Let's like be realistic. I don't want that either.
Speaker 2:But ai has been a huge fun affect of our business and you know, processes have been condensed and writing has gotten stronger and there's, you know, listing and optimizations for our online have gotten easier and there's just a lot of cool things that ai has done to shorten and time compress, um and create opportunities in our business from e-com, which has been fascinating to watch the markets themselves. You can still play with it, but I think people mostly don't understand what to do with it yet or how to take advantage of it. So you kind of have to figure something in business to do and then you'll see how AI applies itself to whatever it is you're doing. And then you'll see how AI applies itself, you know, to whatever it is you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That's what I found is most people aren't viewing AI, they're not utilizing AI unless they're doing something creative, unless they're having a business, unless there's entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:Otherwise they're kind of just playing with it, you know.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Maybe reinventing asteroids with Grok 3. I saw that the other day, which is cool, but what does it do other than prove that you don?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so for you. I know you were looking into e-com, so you're doing managing, consulting. How did you guys get to start changing it into brands and management and Amazon, Because I know there's dropshipping? So many changes. Things are happening so fast that it's kind of intimidating for a person who's paycheck to paycheck to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to hop into e-com paycheck to go yeah, I'm going to hop into e-comm and it's like well, you got it. No, honestly, today, if you're going to hop into e-comm at the level of paycheck to paycheck, you need to be in product flipping. You need to be looking for buy low, sell high on like Facebook marketplace and other things. It's building a brand with a full e-commerce engine. A full inventory purchase is probably not in your wheelhouse, right. So you know, be careful with the online courses and these things where they're like, hey, pay $3,000 and you'll launch a seven-figure product on Amazon. What they're not telling you is the $30,000 to $40,000 to $50,000 you need behind it to actually make that economic engine really go for you and actually turn into a going concern. That's just part of the online hopium guru lottery sniffing mindset mentality out there that you got to be very careful of. Real business is done in quarters. It's done in years. It's done usually at a negative startup position, a capitalized position that turns into revenue and from revenues you optimize into profits. That's the truth. How fast you get to revenue is very important because that's actually when the business starts and then from there you optimize anything you're doing to get profits in the business and then, if you can, you reinvest the profits for growth so that you can take more out later. That's what most people don't want to hear right, especially if they're thinking about business and growth. But from an e-commerce perspective, physical product and inventory are obviously a huge opportunity.
Speaker 2:In 2007, 2010, where I got into it a bit was in the online marketing side, when my management consulting component which was me basically on going on contracts, basically trading time for money but for nicer dollar amounts was like, well, I can't keep doing this. And so I found a mentor, someone who actually mentored me at a Tulsa who owned a little business, a tech business, and just listening to him and watching how he closed deals and just being mentored by him personally. You know he kept repeating over and over sales fixes everything, sales fixes everything. Just don't sell unethically, don't be used car salesman. Figure out what to sell, sell through relationships and just sell. Do not be afraid to sell. Do not be afraid of the rejection, because every no is a K? N? O? W until it's a hell no. So don't give up. And I'm like, oh well, that's genius.
Speaker 2:So when I did that, I finally expanded. I actually ended up with 10 management consultants and under a subcontract through IBM believe it or not on a public project on my team helped deliver the 2010 census. So while they were doing that, I was playing with internet marketing and I was looking at online marketing to generate more sales, more contacts, more revenue. And I stumbled upon mobile marketing. At that point there was no web interfaces. I'm gonna literally date myself like I should have a Gandalf beard here or something like this is ancient technology, but literally mobile marketing was a new thing and sending advertising into people's cell phones was a new thing and the iPhone had released, so this was getting faster and faster. Right, but even so, we were seeing some technology and Internet. The other countries of the world had already had faster internet than us like five years before. Like they're five years ahead of us in a lot of technologies which most people in america can't even fathom?
Speaker 1:yeah, very fascinating. And that's why I think travel is so important, because when you go to different countries, you start to see the future and you're like whoa, some of this stuff is like crazy.
Speaker 2:How could they have some infrastructure that's so much stronger than america, especially like in the internet and interwebs and technology? But in other places they're even like way behind us, like it's fascinating economy. But when I discovered that mobile marketing there was no interfaces, no web, no whatever I was literally putting spreadsheets on uploads into mobile servers that were then going out and doing media buys and then returning data back to me after the money was spent because there's no way to stop it Right. So it's like if you put a, put 500 out there, you better be able to lose 500 or hopefully gain back. You don't know what's going to happen, just it's gone. You did your creative, you shot it out there like you know, hail mary and you hope you get it right, uh, and then you refine it and do it again and again, and so what ended up happening is some of the systems started to come online.
Speaker 2:While I was doing that, I started to have some success and I turned into more of affiliate marketing and then I started to make more money than I was making on the management consulting side and without the people problems and the system problems and the credit card billing and all the staffing problems that a management staffing firm has. And I said, hey, what if I just do this full time? And so I pretty much got rid of the people and just went into mobile marketing for a couple years with that knowledge and information. I was making more every day than I was making a month previous to that, and then it was just doubling over the top of itself because mobile advertising cost per install, cost per lead I was basically buying traffic and selling traffic and making it off the difference. And I could do that a thousand times a day.
Speaker 1:Um, because you can scale, so you can scale the information a lot more.
Speaker 2:I could scale the information. My mind just kind of went like the abundance complex of the internet suddenly hit me like full brick. Like I could, I was sending data. Some of my best offers were dating offers in South Africa and South America and other countries, turkey and stuff. Like they were blowing up, like I was making thousand dollar a day in profit out of these countries because they were just buying these dating apps off of my advertising and I was making like a dollar to $3 every time they did that and it was just like ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching and I was just watching it come in like insanely fast. I'm like, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the best part about that is that people don't realize that half the time is you're putting in the work.
Speaker 2:You don't know what the result is gonna be, but you have to test it out and try 300 campaigns in tens of thousands on a credit card that I was hoping I could start paying back, and I hit a winner. It took me 300 campaigns to hit the first winner. And once I hit that first winner, that was kind of the clutch moment where I realized some of the things I was doing wrong. Right, because out of failure you learn. You don't learn out of success. Success is just one of those things that kind of puts a notch on your belt and looks great and kind of gives you a little opium hit. But then you're like, okay, back to work.
Speaker 2:Um, because I, over the thousand failures that were behind me, right, and I just you know, 301, 302, 305, 310, like I just kept going. I just kept tweaking, tweaking, tweaking a little two millimeter shifts and they kept working and they kept working and it kept working. Once I figured out the narrative, once I figured out the audience, once I figured out who I was speaking to, then I could sell them these apps and I could sell them these installs, and I could sell them this mobile stuff. And what I realized, though, the offer ended and I didn't control the offer and I'm like, hold on, I don't actually control the offer. So things that get going really well, and then the offer person who controlled the end was like, well, we're not running that anymore or you can't run it in Turkey anymore, so I had to shut it
Speaker 1:down no control? Yeah, because the major benefit there for the audience to realize is that neil was constantly testing and iterating to see how to improve and most of the time we sit there, run it once, maybe you'll test it two weeks later, and it's like that's not a few hundred dollars but didn't make a few thousand.
Speaker 2:It's a total waste. It's a total scam. This thing doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, these are the wrong thought.
Speaker 2:These are not strong coping mechanisms. These are not strong risk reward ratio in your mind. You have to realize the risk to reward ratio is going to be greater in the volume of opportunity. If you want seven figures, you're going to have to risk seven figures right, not upfront, but over time. Yeah, and to get to my first seven figures in a physical product business took three years. Wow. So when we did that from 2012 to 2015, I realized by the time I got to 2012, I needed to own the product, I needed to own the intellectual property, I needed to own the asset on the end, because once I got the marketing engine going, I didn't want it to end and if I could control the other half of it, I could. That problem and this was just an evolution, like it seems like common sense now and it's like I teach people this and we like this is why you have to do this. But when I was doing it, that was new. That was like, oh my gosh, why didn't I figure this out like half?
Speaker 1:the world probably did this. I feel stupid. The funny thing is that a lot of people go from job to job to job and they start making more money that way. But in a business, people will start doing different businesses, different things, see what works, what doesn't work, and you're basically doing new jobs each and every time you're kind of changing the offer, changing the scope, changing the marketing which, by the way, is an activity of sales, not a guarantee.
Speaker 2:So I think people hear guarantee and marketing. Well, if I market this product or I do this, you know I launch this brand. Is it? Is it going to guarantee to make sales? Or am I guaranteed if I work with you? No, nothing's guaranteed. Like, go watch Tommy boy. There's a great line in there when he talks about guarantees. You probably need to hear it.
Speaker 2:The end result is you need to go forward with iterations and fail your way forward. Fail, fail, fail, fail, small win. What did I do? Right? Okay, fail again, fail again. When, oh, I got faster at winning. Why am I winning? Because I've done the second thing right. That I figured out after the first mistakes I was making.
Speaker 2:And then it's just a never ending process, a desire and tenacity to just keep finding and breaking and going, and I realize I have that as a natural tendency to my personality. I just want to push, try, go pisses everybody else off around me because it makes them like anxious, because I'm always pushing. Why can't we do this? Why can't we do it faster? Why is this not wrong? Why is this guy going slower? If he can't go faster, then we need to replace this person. And they're like what? No, like yes, keep going, uh, bush. So we did that and when we controlled the product, okay, which we didn't at the beginning, to be honest, we flipped products and be transparent, we flipped products for profit and realized that process just to figure out how to do it and you know.
Speaker 2:But he's like he's trying on amazon because you can't do this on ebay. And oh, by the way, they have this thing called fulfilled by amazon, which means they deliver the products and package for you when you ship it to their warehouses. I'm like, oh, that's super cool because, coming from the digital world, I didn't touch the products I didn't want to them and I didn't want a warehouse of inventory, which I later got anyways long story, but I didn't want to get out of my basement, I didn't want to drop ship stuff, I didn't want to be eBay and whatever.
Speaker 2:And he's like, no, you got to check out FBA, cool. Well, it turns out they do all this really cool stuff to kind of automate the process of last mile. If you've ordered anything from Amazon, then you know what shows up in your door, etc. We can utilize that too, right. So when we started utilizing that and having our own products, uh, it completely changed. We first started by just testing the market with products. We found 200 to this and we flipped it and we sold it for a couple grand in profit.
Speaker 1:We're like, oh, that's so I think that that's a really important thing for people to realize that when you're getting started, you can try things out.
Speaker 2:You don't have to go try things out. Five thousand dollar or the five.
Speaker 1:The $5,000 order, the 5,000 unit order you should-.
Speaker 2:No, you should never try that. No, no, no, no. You should always go through an iterative testing. We developed eventually what we call our five by five product launch process. Five products in the market. Okay, those five can sell an average organic sales of 25 units a day of a physical product with minimal $12 in net profit. That should net you about $300 to $400 a day in profit. And, by the way, a day doesn't end on Friday, it goes on Saturday and Sunday too, and it goes when you're sleeping, which is pretty important, because at that point everything I was doing was in my waking hours and when I was sleeping I wasn't making money. And now I can make money 24-7. So that's a big win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is?
Speaker 1:massive. You want to think differently, and that's why I think differently. That's why I want to kneel on the podcast, because it starts to get you to start thinking differently. For the audience to realize is that it's not hey, I need to work these hours. It's no, the internet's always on, always on, always shopping. There are people always doing different things and they buy at different times, and that's what's. The power of the internet is that you can reach all of these different people in a much quicker way.
Speaker 2:What you need is a strategy and a process. If you understand the idea of a physical product and selling a physical product, if you've ever had a yard sale, you know what I'm talking about. Okay, this is just different. You're not discounting it for 50 cents, you're actually increasing the price point, which is why I don't like eBay. But with Amazon, you know you increase your price point. So we test the products and we did test products and in fact, one of my first hits was a product that I found we ended up coining the phrase as the scene on TV strategy for Amazon, which eventually led me into a conversation with Kevin Harrington and became friends.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, but the antithesis of whether I was up at four in the morning feeding a bottle to my third daughter and she was up at four in the morning feeding a bottle to my third daughter and she was up, and I usually got the night shift because I'm a night owl. My wife gets really tired and God bless her, so I stay up late and she doesn't. But that worked great. So I'm up and I'm watching infomercials and up pops this thing for seat pets and it's this toy and it's this doll and it has a fit character fed on it or whatever, and I'm like, what can I buy? To what the heck can I sell? Yes, and with that it was like, oh, I could sell one of those thing.
Speaker 2:And so the next morning I got up and I showed Reed and he's like, yeah, let's go check it out. So we looked on Amazon and they were doing a crappy job on Amazon but they were doing all marketing right out into the infomercials and all this space and their on amazon presence was really bad. So we basically went and did a hail mary pass, which I do not recommend. We got 2 000 units of the products. We had anime features created to make a little differentiation, a little innovation, not inventing.
Speaker 1:Where did you buy the?
Speaker 2:2000 from. We got them out of uh india. We had a manufacturer for us. They did prototypes and stuff. Okay, a whole I Okay, I just want everyone to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't the United States, we had to find a manufacturer outside the country to do it. But we got those 2,000 in and we got some really great photos. They were iPhone photos, kids in use, cute little figures. We did a pretty good job on the listing, wrote the copy and got the graphics and everything in there and in two, eight weeks we sold all 2000 of those units organically.
Speaker 2:So what we did was we captured the demand coming on to Amazon from marketing and advertising that was happening off and we simply beat them on the Amazon game and once we realized that could happen, all this product opportunity just opened up like lights came down and angels were singing and we're like holy crap. So once we realized that, we developed processes and methodologies to make sure profitability was there and we could increase the retail price point, which increased the profitability, we were actually selling $5 more per unit than the competitor and Belt Buddies became our brand, turned it into a great brand that led into a bunch of other brands and kitchen and home supplies and all kinds of product lines that just grew and grew in that process as we kept following this demand capture mentality, because Amazon is a demand capture platform. It was a demand discovery platform back in the day, right.
Speaker 1:But now it's a demand capture platform.
Speaker 2:What's the difference there? What does that mean? It's two directions. So what's happening now is Amazon has got so many subscribers that are there every you know to buy, and it is now capturing like 20 to 30 percent of online traffic, as well as television ads, etc. People are now seeing it like a stationary, de facto standard. If I can't get it on this website or on retail, I can't get it on Amazon, and so they'll cross to Amazon continuously. So now it's capturing demand from all of these different places, right, and yeah, and I want the audience to realize you're probably already doing this.
Speaker 1:Like I have a protein bar that I buy at Publix. Like I'm in Tampa, so there's a bar that's at Publix. It was a six-pack. They dropped the six-pack to a four-pack and they dropped a dollar and I'm like why would I buy a four-pack for the same price? Look on Amazon, you can get a 12 pack for half the price. I'm just going to buy these on Amazon because I still like the bar and I'm still going to do the thing. But it's important to realize this that when you're looking at these different advertisements, it's like Netflix Everyone's Netflix is catered to them, which means you're not going to look 20 pages in to go find the thing that's not for you. That's why, in Amazon, you need to be one of those top looks so that you can be the one of that demand that's already flowing.
Speaker 2:We call it Amazon, is a river, but it's a decision tree of information, a data warehouse, but it's a flowing river of data that's flowing millions of searches for products every year. There could be 3 million searches for dish towels and 8 million for air fryers and those are flowing like a river of sales through that demand. And it's coming from all these different locations, including sales on Amazon, from people who were there and prime members who were buying and constantly buying or subscribe and save or whatever. So it's created this ecosystem that captures demand from locations outside of.
Speaker 1:Amazon, which is cool Absolutely, and that's completely different than the person who's like yeah, I really like microphones, so I'm going to make a microphone brand.
Speaker 2:Like Neil is looking at it.
Speaker 1:he's seeing where the demand is and then he's capturing it where he's like I'm going to place myself there and see if there's an opportunity there we look at the customer need first and we determine the value of the customer need on the platform.
Speaker 2:Then we go backwards and determine the volume of the customer need, which then leads us down to you know which ones have the profitability and the metrics in our green light process to determine our metrics of growth. And then out of that falls the products. Which products are most in demand for that customer need? We evaluate them through our green light process and then we go after the ones that are in the highest demand, highest upside potential, lowest saturation, with good competition, and ones where we know that there is a certain amount of vendors that are in there 10, 20, 30, 40 of them but we know that to break into the top 10% could happen in the next 18 months or less, based on our projections. And then we will approach a test in that market to find out if the market will accept our product. And we will approach a test in that market to find out if the market will accept our product, our value, our proposition, our price point, and we do 100 unit to 500 unit test of that and we find out how close were we in the market with a language and copy and demand, because it's very important to understand something on the online world.
Speaker 2:Now we sell data to AI engines. The AI engines in their systems sell the product to the customer. Yes, so people are. So I've got this all reversed and, if you get anything out of today, I don't sell products to customers, right? I sell data to AI engines, yes, and this is completely different than most of the people you've heard who started.
Speaker 2:They're all product focused, product, product, and you focus on all this product. And product is the second most important thing. I'm not discounting it, neil. You're saying we don't have to worry about the product. I mean people, come on, I didn't say yellow, it doesn't mean I don't like yellow.
Speaker 2:The end result is that products are the second most important thing. You must create a great product, but it doesn't have to be an invented product. It has to be an innovative product, which means you take something in the market, you make it just a little bit better, you customize it, which gives you private label capabilities. But if it's in demand and you can create one, then what is the differentiator? It's your marketing and approach to that customer that makes the difference in how you sell the data to the engine, which is entirely intended to get the right customer at the right place in the right time, at the right price point, to hit add to cart and do it again and again, and again, and it's entirely geared towards all that, with large language models and systems of super intelligence that I'm not even going to go after.
Speaker 2:So my thing is to proxy the right data. With the right data, I determine which product is most in demand. So when I say I launched five products, I'm launching five data sets. Yes, you see which data set of graphics, images, copy, a plus content or whatever else is in there, is convincing the customer. Okay, as within 30 seconds or less, to buy one of my products. And I'm giving a hundred products of units into each of those tests to find out which one sells. Remember, sales fixes everything right?
Speaker 1:Yes, so now I know that one or two of them will take off. Yes, and this is so important for people to realize because it's not. This is completely contrarian to how most people are thinking about products and Amazon and doing all of this.
Speaker 2:They think if I spend, you know, 80 hours cutting, you know, sharpening the axe, that if I get a000 and 5,000 units that I'm going to be able to launch that into Amazon and all of a sudden, within six months, all my Lambo hopes and dreams are going to occur. They're wrong. That happens for like 1% of the people. 99% of the people spend the first 12 months building their knowledge, expertise and the learn and earn aspects of building up their brand and then they go into growth mode in year two, which begets profits. Okay, Profits can happen in year one, but if you deploy it back into the system, year two will go into growth every year.
Speaker 2:On a system like Amazon it's an exponential growth. So in the first year only 5% of all new products see all of Amazon's market. By year two that becomes 20%. It's exponential leap and if the products stay in the market, by year three that goes up to 40%. So you've got a three-year window on Amazon of growth to scale opportunity and that's exactly how you have to approach it. If you're approaching it well, I'm going to give this six months and see if it works. You've already lost. You've not given enough time in the system to mature the product, the review, the marketing, the inventory and the growth and you're going to fail at it. Right, absolutely, product is going to tell you that no hopium guys because you want you to buy your course.
Speaker 1:No, of course, of course, it's just just now it's a completely different approach. So, neil, I want to do a quick pivot here. I know you live a very interesting life, one that is very purposeful to you. How did you do that? And what is this purposeful life? Because I know a lot of people are sitting there going like this sounds great, I get it, but like, what does that mean for my lifestyle? How does that look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody talks about, you know, build a business, have a great lifestyle. Well, in actuality, I work all week long, even on the weekends. You know I work but I love it and I'm in love with the product and development in the process and to me it doesn't feel like work, it just feels like an extension of life. And so by that I made it a part of my lifestyle. I made it a part of the way we operate. We live on 50 acres in the country. We got a heritage seed garden we do every year that's a hundred foot garden out there.
Speaker 2:We spend a lot of time with our kids, we homeschool our family here and spend time with them all the time. As I was telling you before the call, I showed up a couple minutes late because we were in talking around the island Kitchen Island about economics and whether senators should have tenure and whether they should be making money and if it's ethical to be getting information from committees we were going through, you know, economics and how old, how old are your kids? Uh, the youngest is 11, will be 12 in april and the oldest is 16, and then I have a 13 year old and 15 year old and all that so are people learning that in high school and middle school?
Speaker 1:no, not at this level of conversation they don't even know how to write a checkbook right.
Speaker 2:I know my kids are talking about irrational factors in economics and elasticity and supply of demand. Um, these are things, don't not? We are not the same as the joke says on the internet. So we're we're always in learning and growing mode and it's just an extension of our life to be a part of that in that business. And the whole purpose is my wife and I got going in life and actually we got married in 2007. Um, we got pregnant in 2007 with our first child and, because of complications, she went on the bed rest. So, you know, I left my job, she ended up leaving her job and we started our business and a pregnancy and a new marriage all in the same year. So, yeah, that one so in. So we just made purpose a part of everything.
Speaker 2:In fact, when we got going in that first three years and I found the gentleman who was willing to help him, kind of take me under his wing and learn to extend the time necessary to allow that to occur, we sold the home we built Right, we got rid of the car. We knew we needed the time to make this go, and so we pushed intensively to do and change our entire life At that point. You know, prior to that, I spent 200 days on the road with IBM in the year before leaving and I did not want to be that, I didn't want to be that part of my family. I was not willing to just leave them, and so it was all about the purpose and value of our family over the profits. We knew they would come if we stayed focused and we stayed intentional. And so family and the drive to stay around my family and not leave them was the intent of the entire thing. The business just had to fit into it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and when you think intentionally, it completely changes everything.
Speaker 2:You're willing to do certain things, you're willing to risk certain things. Neil, I can't do that. I'm not in the same place. I have a mortgage. I have a car. I haven't. You can get rid of the mortgage, well, but I have the car. And then a choice.
Speaker 1:You have a choice it's all choices, because a lot of us sit there, go, I can't change my lifestyle. I can't do this absolutely. Everything we do is a choice change the language. What you're saying is I won't. Yes, absolutely. And you start to realize here the amount of time you save, the amount of time you spend with your family because they're homeschooled, the amount of time you save with your wife because she's not working or she might be working from the home. Oh, she works, she works a lot here.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of time together.
Speaker 1:because you guys don't realize it is that that whole contrarian thinking of I have to drive to this office, I have to do this thing. Those are becoming more and more optional nowadays. I mean, you guys were doing it way ahead of your time, but it's becoming super optional after the COVID, everything that went on there, and people start to realize that you can do things very differently.
Speaker 2:You can create whatever life you want. You absolutely can. And to get out here 10 years ago, where we're now on this acreage, we left the 3,800 square foot home and moved into an 1,800 square foot home, right Knowing that eventually because we had the acreage, that the kids were smaller and we'd upgrade the house, we wanted to move away from the city, we wanted to have the homeschooling aspect, we wanted more control and influence over their lives for the future opportunities that we hope they could get. As we went through this process ourselves and eventually we've added onto the house and we've gotten bigger stuff and we've made more room and this kind of thing. But even by that standard, based on what we make, it could be a lot more grandiose. We just that's not our focus. Our focus is on pouring into our family, not pouring into our stuff.
Speaker 2:So some people would look at our house and be like well, why don't you have a nicer house? Well, because I got a bigger business.
Speaker 1:And the other. The other funny thing was I forgot it was one of the comedians he literally goes you can have a 5,000 square foot house, but there's something about having the 2,500, 3,000 square foot house where you run into your kids consistently.
Speaker 2:You see everybody there's chaos.
Speaker 1:There's stuff going on. You're like this is a mess, this is, and it's that whole family environment, cause you're like 5,000 square feet, I might not see my daughter for three days.
Speaker 2:She's on some other part of the house? No, or she's on some other part of the house? No, and forcibly because of the way we have now the kitchen and island and living area and extension. All together it's now about 3,000 square foot and it's perfect because the entire mingling area of our home opposite of their rooms, which they don't spend very much time in at all hardly at all, actually they spend all of their time on this end of the house, so we're always around each other. And you said you have conversations just in front of conversations. Anytime I want, it's you two and three kids. No, it's my, my, we have four kids and my wife and I just get less total.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and the best, because what I realize is, if you're at that 500 square five to 600 square feet per person, everyone gets their individual space right, but at the same time, you're running into each other constantly. But there is enough space? Oh, there's yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, in what space do you actually need If you're trying to distance yourself from your children? What's the point? If you don't want your children and you want them out of the house every day, then what's the point? Like, really, why have children if you constantly don't want them to be around you? Why have them if you don't want to enjoy them? Why be around these people if you didn't want them in the first place? Really, think about it for a second. I know it sounds like critical, but as people argue about, well, I can't wait for my kids to go back to school and I'm like, okay, why do you not want to be around your family? Like these are the questions that go through my head. Like, why do you not want to be around them? It's because you're not raising people. You want to be around.
Speaker 1:So start so who taught you and kind of gave you? Were there any mentors in your life that kind of gave you this eye opening experience of like, maybe we should homeschool, maybe we should go build a larger pastor, maybe we should get more farmland? Like, where did that idea come from it?
Speaker 2:came out of a desire. This is going to sound really kind of simple maybe, or just not specific enough, but I was sitting around a table on the last project, uh, at ibm before I left, and it was like a dinner where you have the you know last project dinner or whatever and then people sit around and I there was four guys there and a couple ladies and we were having dinner and one of them answered his phone about 25 years, my senior at that point right and he's like oh, you had your dance and oh, how did it go? And oh, I, can't wait.
Speaker 1:Oh no, oh no.
Speaker 2:I know where this is going because it was the end of the time, because we were training, because I was already starting to think about leaving and kind of figuring out what this situation was going to change like as I was getting married. This was like december and I was getting married in march and he was on the phone and I knew I was getting married and things were changing and I wanted it to change. Suddenly I was willing to hear and listen, I was my eyes were open, I was willing to accept that information and I heard that conversation and it wrecked my heart on his behalf, yeah, but it also changed my idea. It also changed my thought process. I did not want all of the things that I was shooting for. I did not know why I was going after him. I don't know, not know why I was just pushing for these things and when we have they're going to go to school and we're going to send them to college and they're going to be these people, and why I was pushing for all that stuff. It just like why. It just hit me like a ton of bricks and and through that entire period of dealing with the next year with my wife and stuff, we and getting pregnant, the conversations were forcibly put in front of us next and it just kept ringing in my head. That conversation I heard and the angst in his voice and the heartache in his face. It hurt his heart. And when I saw that empathy for him, it came out and it was compassion and I was like I don't want to be that place, I don't want to have those phone calls with my kids, I am not going to do that. And so the whole premise of everything I was building towards changed.
Speaker 2:And then it just became an actionable step with my wife and everything after that, to just keep turning it and she, by the grace of god, was like I want to not go to work anymore, I would rather stay home and take care of the kids and do this. And I'm like thank you, like let's do this. This is amazing. And she had to take a lead role and she had to sacrifice herself in doing that and because of that she she is an integral part of why this whole thing works. I couldn't't do what I do here if she doesn't CEO this situation over here and we have space and she gets to do what she needs to do to take care of the kids without question and provide, and I get to provide over here and I do whatever I need to do in the business, without question Make the money, make the finances. I don't need her approval, she just lets it go and with that freedom I'm able to move and flow through the business and allow her to flow through life, and together we kind of became a team. Yeah, it became very purposeful that the value of what we were doing was greater than the profits, and so we shifted that conversation to what we now call the five profits, which the first one is faith.
Speaker 2:If you're going to do any kind of business, you got to walk out on the water and do not expect to be Jesus. So you're going to do any kind of business, you got to walk out on the water and do not expect to be Jesus, so you're probably going to sink at first. It's who's there to help you get back in the boat. It's most important, okay, and there is okay, faith family. The second group is going to be anybody who's going to support you through this. Whether they're critical or not, they're usually going to be the last ones at your deathbed or your inheritance. They're going to be there. The friends component Some friends can be closer to you than family. Some of them can help you, they can build relationship, they can build tribe. Friends can be a very important component of your life, even sometimes closer than your family.
Speaker 2:The next one is finances. Without it, you can't have a going concern, you can't have a profit, you can't have payments for your kids and mortgage and anything else you need. You've got to have finances right, so be very smart about how you deploy them and what you do with them. And the last one is the freedom the freedom to do all the other things I just mentioned. You actually have it, and when you start to empower your language of choice, you stop saying I don't have to be here. You start to say I get to be here.
Speaker 2:And when you change that I get to be here, you suddenly realize well, I get to be anywhere, I get to be somewhere else. If I want to, I get to not go to work today. If I don't want to, I don't have to go to work. Of course it has consequences. So then you just have to stop and think well, if I get to be here, then I should change the way that I am here, and if I don't want to be here, then I get to be somewhere else because I choose to be somewhere else and you get to empower that choice. It's all freedom and it literally gets into your mind all the barriers, mountains, issues, et cetera. Okay, and you start counting those mountains as some sort of you know accolade and instead of you know climbing the mountain, you carry it Right. And instead of that, you start using this baggage and you carry this baggage around and you look at my mountain man and nobody wants to see your mountain dude.
Speaker 2:We all got them so figure out how to put that down and start working towards the positive aspects of things you get to do, and when you get to do them, Then you start thinking differently about time. The biggest factor of all of these things is time. As we grow older especially for you men that are listening to this we start thinking about generational opportunities and kids and what we want to do and what we're going to leave them as a legacy or value, not just monetary, but historically and emotionally, maybe spiritually and financially combined. You know, and obviously, what's the purpose of all of that. As you get older, you start thinking about that more differently. And here's the. You know, the generation of opportunity is now, it's not 20 years in the future.
Speaker 1:No, and that's the most important thing that when you start building a process and you start working towards it, you can put those deposits in every single day moving closer to your goals. But if you don't have that goal, then it's not there.
Speaker 2:Banking on the future is arrogance and pride? Yes, it is. It's banking on arrogance and pride, and if you're like well, I'm not an arrogant, prideful person Tell me about all your future plans for a second and we'll talk about your arrogance and pride. Because you believe you're going to be here when you're 68. I don't, yeah. Okay, do I know I'm going to die before 68? No, I just don't believe I'm going to be here.
Speaker 1:Why Does that?
Speaker 2:change the way I think about every investing in my family and my kids.
Speaker 1:Why don't you spend more time with the children I'm going to?
Speaker 2:do it now? Yes, because I'm going to look forward and be like well, what is it to be at 90? Where do I want to be when I'm 90? And then I'm going to look backwards and be like well, I'm turning 49 next week, so I got 40 years left. Yeah, right, I can figure this out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so I'm going to do it now.
Speaker 2:And so if you start to think differently into abundance, time becomes a different factor in your mind and you start to realize that everybody has a certain amount of time. Why can people seem to do more with the time they have and others cannot? Because they've completely shifted the focus of time, purpose and value. And instead of saying to your children, I don't have time to do that, try saying to that you're not valued enough for me to do that with you right now. Yeah, and when you start thinking that way, it's valued enough for me to do that with you right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when you start thinking that way, it's going to cause you to you. Basically, there's parameters. When you put parameters on yourself, it causes you to do different things. So like you won't be forced to think about it. Yes, if you go to your child today and say You'll have a different action, you'll have a different action.
Speaker 2:Saying I don't have time is just an excuse to get out of. Well, I don't have time to do this because daddy has to go to work. Okay, fine, that is a reciprocal you know value of what you're providing for the home. No skin, you know, no shame in the game, right, but here's the thing. Try telling your kid that in a different way. Try telling them hey, this thing over here is more valuable than you are to me right now.
Speaker 1:Try rephrasing that language and everyone says they're doing it for their family. But it's like are you really?
Speaker 2:No, they're doing it for reasons that don't drive purpose and value. They just have to stop thinking and refocus it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Neil. We could probably go for another three hours. Where can people learn about you?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, personally, LinkedIn or Facebook is where I go and shed my very you know independent thoughts where they haven't kicked me off yet. I go and shed my very independent thoughts where they haven't kicked me off yet. They can go to VoltageDMcom, VoltageDigitalMarketingcom, where we talk about Amazon, Shopify, TikTok, anything e-commerce related and sales channels in focus. If you want to grab the book, it's here or below, I think. We're giving away 10 free copies for anybody who wants to check that out. It's a strategy guide for how to build purpose and value and profits into your business, into your life, following a strategy of e-comm. And, again, voltage dmcom is probably a great place. Presentation, free trainings and book and everything are there to give you more information about what we do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, thank you.
