0 (2s):
Lights that sparked Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast today, we'll be focusing on how building a business selling weird niche products can make you financially free to drop these value bombs. I are brought Stephen Somers and to EOFire studios. Stephen is the co-founder of Marketplace SuperHeroes and online education and services company that helps people all over the world learn how to sell their own products globally on Amazon, completely from scratch. And today Fire Nation. We'll talk about both the mentality and psychology of going from an employee to successful business owner, going from feeling that fear to fearless.

0 (48s):
We've all felt that fear before, and we're going to talk of course about the top productivity tools that every business owner needs today. And so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. According to Forbes, a lot of businesses are set to go on an epic hiring spree and all of these businesses where opening means that millions of jobs will need to be filled. So where do they turn to fill these roles fast ZipRecruiter?

0 (1m 29s):
And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address, ziprecruiter.com/fire. That's ziprecruiter.com/fire. Stephen say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with, right?

1 (1m 49s):
Fire Nation. What an honored is to get the speak here. And yeah, it's a great question, John. And for me, I believe it is mandatory that you are obsessed with getting to where you want to be in order to become successful. And some people say you don't have to be obsessed. You know, you can be interested. I really don't think that's the case. I mean, looking back on my 11 years of doing this now, I would not be sitting here talking to you today. Had I not been obsessed with getting a business up and operational getting out there. And then obviously as time has gone on serving other people. So that's my, my hot take for today. It's a

0 (2m 26s):
Hut TIG Fire Nation. And you'll see, there's a lot of fire themes throughout this interview. Of course, are you prepared to ignite entrepreneurs on fire? The word ignites might come up again. We'll see who knows, but we are talking about how building a business, selling weird niche products can make you financially free. And I actually want to start off in a different direction, which is the reality about the mentality and the psychology of going from an employee to a successful business owner. Can you talk to us about that transition? Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

1 (3m 2s):
I'm doing this now for 11 years before I got into this whole thing. I was a data processor working in a government department. So I was not in a entrepreneurial environment. My family were not entrepreneurial. And in order to transition from someone who was an employee for a lot of my time and change, I had to make a lot of shifts. And I would say the biggest shift that I had the opportunity to make, which everybody listening today, you listening today have an opportunity to make as well as I went from being a consumer to becoming a producer. Now, the key to that really is it does what it says in the tin. Really. It's like a lot of the times we are spending a lot of our time really looking at courses, listening to audios, and that's important.

1 (3m 48s):
And people obviously listen to this show all the time because it's, it's the best show out there and my belief for entrepreneurs, but on the other side of it, you know, you've got to also produce. And I learned, we all know that the parade of principle, right, where you get 80% of your results from 20% of your actions. And I thought about that and I was like, do you know, before I became quote unquote successful, I was consuming 80% and I was producing 20%. And when I made that change and that shift, John, that is when everything like, I know it sounds cliche, but everything changed for me. And I really started to look at the world in a different way. Like who can, who can I speak to it, but it's work.

1 (4m 29s):
And they learn that, but how can I implement the thing that I learned that was the big one? She, you need

0 (4m 34s):
To be able and willing to go from consumer to producer. You have to have a bias for action. You'll hear me say time and time again, put in the flipping reps, John, how to become better at X, Y, or Z by doing X, Y, or Z, by putting in the reps, having a bias for action. I are going to podcasting by doing it every flipping day for now 10 years. And I really liked how you kind of did bring that up because we all do start as consumers, Fire Nation. I mean, think about it. It's like a pendulum. When I started learning about entrepreneurship back in 2012, I was a hundred percent consuming. Is that a know anything about it? And I was 0% producing, but then I realized very quickly, okay, I got to go 90 10.

0 (5m 17s):
I got to actually start producing on some level. And then it just kept swinging 20, 80, 70, 30, 60, 40 to now where I am producing at least 80% of my time, but I'll never stop consuming. Like I need that 20% to keep consuming, to keep learning, to stay a first mover in my industry, but also in other potential industries. Like I'm pretty obsessed right now with NFTs and crypto. Like, we'll see where that goes. Maybe nowhere, but it's really interesting to learn about because I have that time to consume and maybe down the line, you'll see me come out and, and produce. But a lot of people just feel the fear. And that's just a reality that so many people feel Stephen.

0 (5m 58s):
You felt it. I, it, but the reality is the reason why you and I, and everybody in Fire Nation who's listening, who's ever done anything that's meaningful in life has felt fear is because we're a human being. Okay. We're humans. We feel the fear, but how do we go from that

2 (6m 11s):
To fearless again?

1 (6m 13s):
It's, it's, it's a big one. It took me a number of years to, to, to do that. And so I think the first thing, and it's kind of an odd way to start this, but I truly believe that you have to understand that we're all going to die one day. And I know that sounds so TripIt

3 (6m 27s):
Or whatever. It's just true. Right? True. Yeah. We're all human. Right. So I

1 (6m 32s):
Often thought about that and I've arrived was working in my data processing job. I was like, you know, I'm going to die one day. And right now I'm not happy. I'm not where I want to be. So in order to get from where I was to where I wanted to be, I had to, like the saying goes, feel the fear and do it anyway. But for, for me as well, I've learned a number of things about this. The first one from an entrepreneurship standpoint is way too many of us are trying to come up with the way to do everything ourselves. Whereas if you actually shift that on, you're just starting go and find a pre proven process, right? Of some kind that you believe in and execute on that, that's the first way. So when you do that, you get real tangible experience as a business owner.

1 (7m 16s):
Even if you make $200 a month in profit, right? It doesn't matter. You've got experience at actually doing something, producing something in business. So that's the first step then obviously connected to that. For me personally, was getting funding a mentor. Again, it's almost cliche advice now, but it is often forgotten about my mentor Roberts. They're my business partners. To this day. He helped me because I was afraid of pulling the trigger specifically on importing products. I was going to sell on Amazon at the time. And, and so what Robert did for me, he was, he actually showed me, well, when you bring something in, even if you just get your money back, your life didn't get any worse. As a matter of fact, your life got 10 times better because now you realized, Hey, I'm not going to be homeless.

1 (7m 60s):
If this first attempt doesn't work out perfectly. But more importantly, it was that when you actually execute on something on that's already proven, the process has been that the path has been laid out for you. Your chance of success is exponentially higher. So for you listening today, if you're feeling fear about whatever it is you're looking to do, go and find people who've already done it. You've heard this advice before, but do it because oftentimes people hear this advice and they don't actually follow up, find someone who's already done it. But most importantly, find a process you can follow, execute on that, forget everything else. And you'll become more fearless with time because your comfort zone will start to expand. As you get actual success.

1 (8m 40s):
There's actual science on this. John like getting around the fact that when you achieve even a small goal, your confidence levels shoot up your belief level, shoot up where some of us are trying to go from. No experience, never had a business to doing a hundred grand in our first. And it's just not a realistic way to go. Sure. Some people do have book they're the outliers. So, so focused on the pre proven process, someone who's already done it and then do whatever it takes, pay him the money, sell your car, whatever it takes to, to learn from that person. That's what I did. I, I actually moved in with my aunt into her spare room and I worked with Robert in a warehouse for almost a year for not for no real money because I wanted to learn.

1 (9m 21s):
And that's what I believe.

0 (9m 23s):
See, I love this for so many reasons. Fire Nation. I mean, how bad do you want it? How much do you believe in that quote that entrepreneurs are willing to work? And by the way, live, like nobody's willing to work or live for a few years so that they can work and live, like nobody's able to for the rest of their lives. And I've experienced that. I mean, man, if I had gotten close to running out of my runway, I was in a very small one bedroom apartment in Portland may when I launched my podcast entrepreneurs on fire. So my, you know, I had really low expenses, but I would have, you know, got out of there in a second and moved back in with my parents. Even though I was 32 years old, I wouldn't have cared because I saw the potential in the future. If I could just keep doing this thing long enough and kind of going back and circling to what Stephen started off with, there's a coal by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which I love do the thing you fear.

0 (10m 13s):
And the death of fear is certain. So guess what? You're scared of X, Y, or Z do it. And that fear and that, and that fear will die. The death of that fear is absolutely certain. I was terrified. The first time I got into the microphone, you think I'm scared now it's like second nature to me. I love it. I was terrified. The first time I got on stage speaking in front of people and, and, and bad by the way. But now I love it. It's something I look forward to unbelievably and it's with everything in life, Fire Nation, you will feel the fear, but you can move to fearless and we're going to be getting to the meat and potatoes of this episode. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, there are some things in life that I like to pick out myself.

0 (10m 55s):
So I know I've got the ones that are best for me, like an avocado from the markets or my next pair of running shoes. What if you could do the same thing for hiring choose your ideal candidate before they even apply. Now you can thanks to ZipRecruiter's invite to apply. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire. How does invite it to apply work? Well when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, they send you the most qualified people for your job. Then you can easily review the candidates and invite your top choices to apply Lauren web S VP of talent acquisition at min doula health raves about ZipRecruiter is invited to apply. She says, I love that feature because we have a much higher follow-through rate. If I invite candidates, it's easy for me and easy for them. In fact, according to ZipRecruiter's internal data jobs where employers use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply, get on average two and a half times more candidates, which helps make for a faster hiring process.

0 (11m 44s):
See for yourself, visit ziprecruiter.com/fire to try ZipRecruiter for free. That's ziprecruiter.com/fire. One more time. Zip recruiter.com/fire. ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire whether you're a guitar teacher, a business coach, or a yoga instructor, entrepreneurs all share something in common, a desire to reach more clients and make a bigger impact without trading their time for money. So how do you do that by creating an online course with Thinkific, expose your business to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of new clients worldwide with low impact on your time. But don't just take our word for it. Meet Vanessa. She runs group therapy, a business that offers beginner dance classes for adults. Vanessa was hearing time and time again that people couldn't make it to class because of time constraints, anxiety, or not living close enough to attend.

0 (12m 28s):
So Vanessa decided to put her dance classes into an online course with Thinkific. So people could take lessons at their own leisure. Her online courses took her business to a new international level and they pretty much run themselves. Not only that, she started making thousands of new revenue every month hitting her financial targets and freeing up time to work more on her business. More than 50,000 entrepreneurs have already used Thinkific to build revenue and educate their students worldwide. Try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. So Stephen, I want to get to those promised meat and potatoes. I want to talk about really how every human has at least one unique and weird passion.

0 (13m 12s):
And some of us have multiple by the way. I'm one of those. We can talk about that later, but I want to talk about how can we build a business selling our own branded weird products globally on Amazon. It's funny because

1 (13m 26s):
With passion, what we talk about America play superheroes is that the passion doesn't necessarily come from the product that you're going to sell, right? Which is a almost counter-intuitive advice to how a lot of people look at businesses, right? I have to sell things I'm passionate about, but the way we go about selling items on Amazon here is that we really follow what the market is telling us to do and where the passion comes in is the results that this business is actually going to give you on the other site. So just really quickly to cover what we're doing here is we are selling our own branded products on Amazon. First of all, it's private label. So we're having a manufacturer actually produce our items and we're then selling them all over the world on Amazon, not just say an amazon.com and in terms of the, the process of how we go about that, the first thing is we've got to go and research and Amazon and find items that are low in competition, but are proven, have proven demand.

1 (14m 20s):
People are already buying those. That's the first thing that we look to do, then we're looking to find a way to improve the offers that are already out there. So for example, one of our items that's doing really well at the moment is a seed box for putting literally what it says in the tin, right? Putting seeds into it's a box, not very exciting. And that's the entire point because most people out there in the Amazon world are telling you to focus on hyper competitive items are so difficult to sell. Whereas we go the other way, we try to find the hidden gem products out there there's that much competition we're able to stand out very quickly in these smaller niche markets, our niche markets we're able to, to dominate quickly with, by putting together a better offer.

1 (15m 1s):
So a better offer could be, say our seed box, for example, let's just say we were going to do that. We would put in other little bonus items that are physical in nature that people are going to use when gardening, because we know it's a seed box, they're going to throw their gardening there for us. What we put in with that. And then we take that simple item. We put our own brand on it, which is important. It gives us protection on Amazon, and then we take it. And what people do with us is they partner with us. Now, when I say partner, I don't mean we start a new business, we take equity or anything like that. What I mean is we become the freight partner. So we educate our clients as to how to become successful. Amazon. We have a course for that, but the biggest thing we've done, John, and it's a great lesson for anybody listening in businesses.

1 (15m 45s):
We have put millions of dollars at this point in time into building our own freight company, because we knew that the key to success in Amazon is your logistics, getting your produce products that your supplier and China's produced for you into the U S into the UK, into Australia, into Canada. And without that, it's, it's challenging to succeed on Amazon, but a private label business simply because freight forwarders and all that, they suck, right? So we came up with a better way to do that, and we've put a lot of money into them. And so essentially what people do is they find these items, they improve the offer. They work with us. We actually deal with their supplier. We help them import their items and we then get them on sale, not just an amazon.com, but in multiple countries.

1 (16m 27s):
And the way to understand that the potential of that for anybody listening is we have something called the rule of five. And what that means is if you've got five products you're going to sell on Amazon, right? You're selling and five different Amazon countries, not just on amazon.com. You're making five sales per day per product per country at an average net profit of $5. And when you multiply that out five by five, by five by five, over a 30 day period in an average month, you're at $18,750 net profit before tax. And usually people, oh, how is this possible? What, how, how are you doing that? And it's simply because we're taking items that don't sell tongues a day, but we're making those small number of sales in a number of countries at the same time.

1 (17m 14s):
And it's really different to how most people do it. I would say we have gone completely the other way. And it's working. We have over 8,000 claims. Now we're going to ship 8 million units this year with our freight company. And it's a very simple way for people to get into business, certainly in e-commerce and get their start. And that's what I love about it. What's

0 (17m 32s):
One of your favorites, weird products that you've done with a client that you're like, man, that really is weird. That really is unique. But at work,

1 (17m 42s):
Yeah, there's one it's so boring. You'll probably all fall asleep listening to this Fire Nation, but I'll tell you anyway. Right? So John's asleep. I love what the product was. It was the thing that covered the feet of a washing machine to stop it from scratching the floor. Right now, it can't get much more. I hate things to scratch

0 (18m 1s):
Floors. Like I literally do. I mean, every part of my furniture, like whenever people are coming in to like move things around to clean, I'm just like pick it up and move it. Don't like drag it across my table. So like, I mean, my floor I'm like, I totally get that. So I'm with you man. Now, one thing that I think you've been able to do very effectively is identify the top productivity tools that every single business owner needs. So share those with us. Yeah. Well,

1 (18m 28s):
When you're getting into Amazon or, or any business for that matter, there's going to be times when you've got to sit down, you've got to get the work done. You've got to focus for me. The tool that, that I love the most is brain.fm. Sure. A lot of people have tried it out or heard about that before. And the reason I love it so much what it is, it actually plays binaural beats, which are like really kind of like it's it's music with a, with a certain beat and rhythm underneath it. And so when you're looking to focus, you basically put this on noise, canceling headphones, and you jump into it and it just puts you into the zone. There's also stuff there for sleep and different things like that. I use that every single day from a productivity standpoint.

1 (19m 11s):
And the funny thing is like, I mean, some people I feel get overly obsessed with productivity as well. Right. And it's funny if you, if all you did right now was you took it, your notes app on your iPhone or your Android. I always use iPhone. That's why I mentioned the notes app. Well, literally, like if you just note down the five top things you're going to do in a day, everything is fives at me. As you can probably see right now, five things you're going to do in a day value, rank them from one being an absolutely critical how to get it done. Two being not as important can wait, three being can absolutely waves at you. Value rank those profile things everyday, even into your notes app, that's going to be one of the best productivity tools you can possibly use.

1 (19m 55s):
But for me, I love brain.fm. It really helps me, keeps me organized and it's pretty awesome. And other than that, like there's a billion other things that we all use. Right? And so I just wanted to get the top one because the end of the day, if I give you a five or six, you're probably not going to use them. Or as you can go try brain.fm, I'm not a affiliate or anything. We can try it out, see what you think about it. And I guarantee you it'll make you more productive. And certainly you're looking to find products. If you're looking to write some emails, email copy, or anything like that and getting into the zone, that's an awesome

0 (20m 27s):
One. And using focus at will for literally eight years now. I mean, I, I can't be on my computer just like going through emails or something without that on, because it's just like, I'm all of a sudden, like, what's what's wrong. I'm like, oh, it's just so quiet because I don't have the folks that will go. And, and I love it. I'll the acoustic version for, so Stephen, give us the one key takeaway. You want to make sure a Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about here today. Give us the best way that we can connect with you and your company. Any call to action you might have. And then we'll say goodbye. The one

1 (21m 2s):
Key thing I want to put out there is if you're looking to get into business, you've got to go and find, like I mentioned, that pre proven process. That makes sense. That's number one. The second thing is when you're choosing someone to work with say John, for example, John has got an incredible track record, you know, shares his numbers all the time is a such a transparent person and business owner. You can trust the, what that person's saying is correct. So always look when you're, when you're trying to pick out someone that you're looking to work with, who have they already worked with? Do they have case studies? Do they have success stories to the process that they're talking about? Because at the end of the day, if you're going to invest a lot of your time and some of your life in a pre, in a process that you were going to execute for maybe a year or two years, you've got to make sure the person you're learning from is legit source on from that another key key thing here is you've got to have a long-term perspective in business.

1 (21m 59s):
I mentioned, I'm doing this now 11 years at this point in time, her companies are doing, you know, eight figures a year in revenue and all of that jazz, which is fine for me. It doesn't matter to you. But point is that it took me 11 years to get to this point. And I've learned a lot along the way. John mentioned, he's doing these podcasts now 10 years. So I think when you see that it's important, understand the process you're learning is going to take you time, not necessarily 10 years to get to a place where you're free, but to a place. Certainly if you're looking at whatever level you're looking to get to be at a bit, a hundred grand a year in net profit. So you can quit that job or 50 grand a year, whatever it is, right? The way through to, I want to have a business doing multiple millions. There is a process.

1 (22m 40s):
Number one, someone that can help you get there. Number two, make sure the legit and just three, having that long-term perspective, man, if you don't have that, you're going to get frustrated quickly. You're going to expect results quickly. It's like the Carol Dweck work on mindset, right? And you can have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset fixed being, oh, I'm not a millionaire. And Amazon and I, I started last week. You know, it's a little bit unrealistic, but that's how some people behave with any business. On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you're someone who is saying, okay, I'm going to learn this process. I'm going like, I'm going to get opened running. I'm going to get products into stock. I'm going to be successful. And then I'm going to innovate beyond that. I'm going to go outside of Amazon.

1 (23m 20s):
I'm going to do other things. I'm going to start podcasting, whatever it is for you, whatever that vision is for you, that's where you can get to, but you've got to get some business experience. And it is my belief that SIM selling products and Amazon is the single simplest way to get that on from as some free stuff. Absolutely. We put together a free guide just for those of you in Fire Nation. And you'd go to N P S H gift.com forward slash fire M P so M for marketplace superheroes, M P S H gift.com forward slash flyer. On in there, it's a really detailed guide. It's going to show you how Amazon works, the types of products, that work types of products that don't work.

1 (24m 5s):
And they're a bit of a snapshot into what I talked about today as well, to give you a bit more, I suppose, detail as to like how the entire business model works and stuff like that. Cause obviously there's a few bits to understand in there. From there, we do share a lot of success stories from our members and stuff like that. As mentioned, we have over 8,000 clients and loads of people who have been successful. So, so yeah, look, I'm here today because number one, I love this show. I listened to this show whenever I wasn't, where I wanted to be and a number of interviews and the show inspired me, kept me going. And certainly when I started marketplace super heroes in 2014, I had no following, no audience whatsoever. John, this show made a big difference in my life.

1 (24m 45s):
And I'd like to thank you for, for consistently putting out content because now all these years later, I know how difficult it is to be that consistent. And you've done it for so long. So kudos to you, Steve and I received

0 (24m 58s):
That. Thank you brother. And right back at you for your consistency and continuing to produce, not just consume and Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with SS and JLD today. So please keep up that heat head over to EOFire.com type Stephen that's, Stephen with a P H - S T E P H E N. And the search bar in the show notes page will pop up. You can read all about it. And of course all the links will be there. And one more time, Stephen, what does that link for Fire Nation to get the amazing gift you put together? Yes, sir.

1 (25m 33s):
It's MPSHgift.com/fire. And it's got tons of tons of stuff in there, everybody and loads of other things you want to see, like other stories that inspire you and so much more so, yeah, go over there right now, grab it and look forward to hearing your feedback on the guide. And more importantly, hopefully see inside the winner circle, as we say, the winner

0 (25m 57s):
Circle, Fire Nation, and Stephen, just to clarify, hate speech is actually as in the letter H for him,

1 (26m 5s):
I keep forgetting that yet. So there's so many, I, I was on a, I was doing an interview recently and I was talking about tomato steaks and everyone was like, what the hell is the tomato steaks? So tomato steaks. So H for H we say, Hey, over here, because we're Irish and usually drunks. That's why we,

0 (26m 21s):
So M P S H as in hotel. So Mike Papa Sierra hotel, and then that's .com/fire. Mike

1 (26m 33s):
Papa, Sierra hotel, gift.com G I F T gift.com/fire. Awesome.

0 (26m 40s):
Well, Fire Nation, if you're thoroughly confused, just go to the show notes page and we link that right up. And Stephen, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value of the Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bond content was brought to you by Stephen and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. And I have created a revolutionary 17 step roadmap to your financial freedom and your fulfillment. I put all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. It is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.

0 (27m 22s):
The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need Fire Nation to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to learn more and order your copy today. And I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip. The flip side Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. According to Forbes, a lot of businesses are set to go on an epic hiring spree and all of these businesses reopening these that millions of jobs will need to be filled.

0 (28m 6s):
So where do they turn to fill these roles? Fast zip recruiter. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address, ZipRecruiter.com/fire. That's ZipRecruiter.com/fire.