0 (2s):
Boom. Shake the room. Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like CEO School. Today we're pulling a timeless EOFire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be talking about being made to win, how to turn your passion and grit into success. To drop these value bombs, I brought Jim Markham into EOFire Studios. Jim is an award-winning studio entrepreneur with an innovative mind and a passion for his craft. In today's foundation, we'll be talking about thinking long-term. Ask yourself what can you do today that will position you five to 10 years down the road? And we'll talk about finding your niche. What can you create that doesn't yet exist?

0 (43s):
And so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jim and our sponsors. If you're looking for highly vetted US-based fractional virtual contractors, then check out Belay. Belay is exclusively offering Fire Nation their latest e-book Delegate to Elevate for free. Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation. Text FIRE. That's F I R E to 55123 to get started. Outbound Squad hosted by Jason Bay is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients.

0 (1m 26s):
One of my faves, the monthly app with Jason Ethan, where they share hacks, tips and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad, wherever you get your Jim. Say What's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

1 (1m 45s):
Hi John. It's an honor to be here with Fire Nation Entrepreneurs on Fire is one of my favorite podcasts. Yes. One of the things that most listeners would not know is when I first moved to California, I played checkers for a living. For about six months, I played, I learned to play checkers from old men in a barbershop back then, as a guy with a wooden leg, taught me how to play checkers. And of course, the people I'm playing learn to play checkers in jail. So I'm blonde, fair haired, southern accent. They underestimated me and I, I made a pretty good living for a while.

0 (2m 22s):
I love that, Jim, thanks for sharing that story. And Fire Nation, as I shared earlier in the introduction, we're gonna be talking all about how you can turn your passion and grit into success. So Jim, you have quite a story, my friends. I mean, right now you're hanging out in Hawaii. You've got a beautiful place in Newport Beach. I mean, life is good. Give us a snapshot of your early days.

1 (2m 48s):
It is a great life. Many interviewers would call my life a rags to richest story. I grew up in New Mexico with an alcoholic mom. We were very poor at age 15. I ended up getting married. I had a child. I went to barber school to support my family. I started cutting hair at 15, at a dollar 50 a haircut.

0 (3m 9s):
Wow. Fire Nation, a dollar 50, a haircuts. I mean, think about that. Think about back to your first job. Think about to your beginnings. I mean, this is the process that we are going through as we're on this entrepreneurial journey. And what I love about Jim is he's not done. In fact, he's not even close to done. But let's kind of go back to those humble beginnings. You were there, a dollar 50 haircuts. How did you make your first leap? Like, how'd you go from where you were just making a buck 50 being like, well, hey, if I do 10 a day, that's 15 bucks to, I'm gonna take a leap and I'm gonna take a chance. Tell us about that.

1 (3m 48s):
That was pretty good. Cutting hair. And I ended up making a pretty good living. You know, I was, it was really good for me to be working as opposed to just loafing. And I, I started, I went to hair styling school to learn to be a hairstylist, a men's hairstylist back then, no doubt. And I went from d cutting a dollar 50 haircut to $5 a haircut, boom. Which still wasn't a lot of money, but it was more than I was making. I figured out very early that I could cut hair and I ended up winning a silver medal in the Hair Olympics, the National Hair Cutting Championship, and several state championships. Then I, I, I was looking around, I kept saying, what else can I do?

1 (4m 29s):
And I, of course, I read a lot of books, which y'all get into in just a second. I called, I read in Playboy that Jay Severing was charging, he's a celebrity salad, $50 a haircut. Whoa. I thought, I'm the national champion. How can he be making 10 times more than me, John, here's my Markham moneymaking tip number one, as you or as you call 'em bong bombs, if someone you admire is making more money than you in the same profession, learn from them. I picked up the phone and called Jay Salon. I said, Jay, congratulations on your success. I'm an award-winning stylist charging $5 a cut. You're charging $50.

1 (5m 11s):
How can I learn from you? Jay said, you have to pay me a thousand dollars to find out. At that time, that was two months income for me before the airline ticket and hotel. Fast forward two weeks, I'm in the salon, cocky and arrogant, very confident. He would say, Jim, your technique is better than mine. What he said was, we're gonna have a friendly competition. We're gonna cut one hit of hair. You're gonna cut one half. I'm gonna cut the other half. Use your razor on your side. I'll use the shears on the other and we'll see who's better at the end, we both knew whose side was better and it wasn't mine.

1 (5m 51s):
I became Jay's protege and Seabring distributor in the Southwest. Things were going great until August the ninth, 1969.

0 (6m 0s):
Now, that day was a turning point for you, and the reality is Fire Nation, not many of us can actually put one date in mind. That was our absolute turning point. You know, sometimes it's kind of this slow moving course of events over weeks and months. We're like, oh yeah, like, you know, that those three months or that year. That was really a turning point for me. But Jim, you have a day. That was a turning point. August 9th. What happened?

1 (6m 28s):
Some of your listeners might remember that was a fateful night. Jay and Sharon Tate were killed by, in the Charles Manson murders. If you've seen Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it's a fictional story about those events that included Jay Sebring as one of the characters. In fact, I helped consult on the set with a hair salon with the decoration, which ended up, most of that ended up on the cutting room floor. They didn't use it, but it, it was really fun to work on the movie,

0 (6m 58s):
Man. I mean, I had no idea that that movie was so much base on fact and not even, you know, having any idea that you actually, you know, gave some advice for that. That's must have been a really cool experience for you in a, in a lot of different ways. But let's kind of talk specifically like how did those Manson murders back on August 9th, 1969, how did those murders affect your career?

1 (7m 23s):
You know, I was living in Albuquerque. I had a Seabring franchise salon there, and I heard on the radio that Jay Seabring was killed with Sharon Tate. And I immediately knew that I'd be going to California and I did. I moved to California. I took over the Seabring business. They asked me to do it cuz I really had been the mechanic doing all the education around the US opening salons, seabring jobs. But I took over the Seabring business. I, I bought his car, the black Porsche. I lived in his house for a while. That was Sharon Tate's old, not Sharon Tate, gene Harlow's old home. It was so scary for me. I couldn't stay there alone cuz raccoons would run across the top. Oh no, I would think it was somebody came to kill me and I was this book to death.

1 (8m 6s):
But I took over Jay's celebrity clientele that, you know, including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Johnny Carson, and Frank Sinatra and, and many, many others. John for a country boy from New Mexico. It was overwhelming. Now,

0 (8m 23s):
At one point, Jim, you switched gears, like you switched gears from what you were doing into product development. Take us through that process. Tell us that story.

1 (8m 34s):
When you're cutting here, you can only make so much, you know, so much per haircut and you know, that's, that's pretty much it. And while I, when I went to California, I started charging $50 a haircut and I cut all these celebrities hair, but you really only limited on how much money you can make. So I realized that right away, that product sales and product distribution is where the money was one of my markup. Moneymaking tip number two is think long-term. Ask yourself, what can I do today that positions me for five to 10 years down the road? So thinking about it that not cutting hairs, it's product development. And I always loved working with products.

1 (9m 14s):
I had the ability, John, to analyze products and create better ones that outperform the old ones. I loved doing it. I still do always have. Jay was a great hairdresser. I sell my future in creating and distributing products. I isel Seabring to start moan line called Markham product in 1972. Second product line.

0 (9m 38s):
So Fire Nation, I really hope you're listening to these Markham value bombs because he keeps dropping 'em. You need to keep picking them up cuz there's a ton of value here. But one thing that I really wanna make sure that you're getting Fire Nation is the fact that, hey, when you're doing something like cutting hair, like when you're doing something like mowing lawns, you can only cut so many hairs a day. You can only mow so many lawns a day. There becomes a limit where you just have the ceiling, the ceiling is there. And that's why Jim was just like, Hey, time to switch into product development. That way while I'm sleeping, products can be flying off the shelves. You know, while I'm eating lunch, products can be flying off the shelves.

0 (10m 18s):
Product development is key, Fire Nation. And if you think Jim is even close to being finished dropping value bombs, Fire Nation, you get another think coming. We got some great stuff coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. No one accomplishes anything great alone, but perhaps you've experienced this too. Delegation in managing a team, especially a virtual team, can be the toughest thing you'll do as a business owner. Well, good news, if you're looking for highly vetted US based fractional virtual contractors, then you've gotta check out Belay. No more throwing away your time on managing details, scheduling meetings, replying to emails and processing reports. If there are tasks and projects you're holding onto, it's time to delegate them so you can free up time to focus on the things only you can do.

0 (11m 1s):
Get out of the administrative weeds and back to growing your business with Belay. They've been helping entrepreneurs scale and succeed for over a decade and can help you find highly qualified virtual assistants, bookkeepers, even social media managers. And to help you get started, Belay is exclusively offering Fire Nation their latest e-book Delegate to Elevate for free. Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation. Text FIRE. That's F I R E to 55123 to get started. Tech is great, it can help us grow and scale our businesses in so many ways, but it can also be clunky, time consuming to manage and expensive. That's why I'm excited to introduce you to HubSpot.

0 (11m 43s):
CRM is the best platform to speed up your sales and scale your business without blowing your budgets. HubSpot's all in one CRM helps you automate tedious tasks, keep track of all your deals in one place and make sure your whole team has access to the same data. No need to worry about the management and cost of a massive tech stack. HubSpot gives you everything you need all in one place. Plus, with fast activation, HubSpot makes it easy for the entire team to get up to speed, saving you precious time. And best of all you can try before you buy. No commitment, no hidden fees. Not even a credit card is needed to sign up. Get started for free at hubspot.com. That's hubspot.com. So, Jim, we're back and when we were talking about the beginning part of your journey, you told us about how you were really focused on the men's portion of the haircuts and hair styling and salon markets.

0 (12m 35s):
Why and how did you transition to the women's market?

1 (12m 39s):
I started out as a barber. I started cutting men's hair. I went all my awards, cutting men's hair around the country. And Jay was, Jay was cutting men's hair and cutting all men. But when I got into the product sales, you know, that's where the money was. And it didn't take me long to realize that the bigger market was a women's market. Women buy 80% of all products. Wow. They buy it for the men, they buy it for themselves. I think you need to know who your customer is. Look at your market. Know your demographics. Mark a money making tip number three is find your niche. Where is the white space in your category?

1 (13m 19s):
What can you create that doesn't yet exist? That's very important, John. What most of your listeners probably don't know is that most hair care products contain animal ingredients. That means they're made from hoofs hides and animal organs. For, for aba, I developed products using natural based ingredients from plants, leaves, fruits, nuts, and berries. These outperform formulas using animal ingredients. If people have the choice, they will nearly always choose plant-based products. I found that aba, pure natural, in 1989, I created the first cruelty-free vegan hair product line. It was actually a big success and we sold it in 1997.

1 (14m 1s):
One

0 (14m 2s):
Thing that I love about what you're sharing, Jim, is the fact that you need to find a void. This not being currently filled in the marketplace. You did that multiple times towards your career, but hey, what'd you find when he came to abba? You said, Hey, there's a lot of people that are making very similar products. We're all using the same strategies, techniques and et cetera. What if I did this that was different? And what if I did something then when people had the choice between the two, as long as they were comparable in quality, they're always gonna choose mine. And you did that with Abba. That's why you had such success back in 1989 and after abba, you thought you were gonna retire but you didn't retire. I mean, you know, you could have gone off and just lived full-time in Hawaii or Newport Beach or just gone on a yacht and traveled around the world.

0 (14m 48s):
But you didn't do that. What happened?

1 (14m 50s):
Well, it's interesting. It started with a phone call. My wife Cheryl and, and, and business partner, her best friend had ovarian cancer and she called me and she said, Jim, you've gotta make me products I can use. I can't use any of the ABA products. They got ingredients I can't use. Which is to my surprise, says I've done the ABA products. And I said, okay, send me a, send me a list of ingredients that you cannot use. So her, her doctor sent me a do not use list of ingredient. I went into the lab and started working with new ingredients. It was really challenging at the time, what I created was the first products that were sulfate free, salt-free, carcinogen free.

1 (15m 32s):
Cuz this was for Carrie at the time. Cheryl, and I'm looking around and trying to figure out if we want to come back or not, but we thought perhaps we would do, since we did the caries products, we'd do 'em for cancer survivors. What we did was we went to Cosmo Profit Italy and we noticed that there was a color boom going on worldwide and all the companies, we saw L'Oreal, everything was growing 20, 30, 40% a year. And we thought, wow, this is interesting. What a, what a great category. And we realized friends of caries and friends that we sent, friends that were testing the product that we developed for Carrie says, what is what's in this product? My color's lasting longer.

1 (16m 12s):
We thought, wow, I don't know. This is a coincidence. So we, we almost didn't do it. When I researched the marketplace, I saw L'Oreal was a top selling shampoo, had us top selling shampoo for color treated hair called Color Vive. Color Vive was, you know, prominent out there. It looked like it was doing well. But we kept investigating. We thought, well we're gonna try it in. We took a leap, we changed our marking plans for cancer patients. We did a little tweaking and we made it exclusively for color treated hair. We thought that's our unique position. And we launched Pureology in 19, or sorry, in 2001, we quickly became the market leader in professional color hair.

1 (16m 54s):
We created the category. I am known as the creator of sulfate Salt-Free products. Your listeners may not know it, but the beauty indu. But in the beauty business industry, this is legendary, fast forward seven years to selling Pureology to L'Oreal for 280 million. Wow. Cash. We actually had 12 different companies. We had venture capital companies, we had strategic buyers trying to to buy Pureology. We did 12 dog and pony shows and we ended up selling to L'Oreal cause they made us a deal we couldn't refuse.

0 (17m 30s):
So Jim, you've decided to move forward and become an author and you have written a book called Big Lucky. So break it down for us, what was the inspiration behind Big Lucky?

1 (17m 44s):
Well, you know, friends for years and, and colleagues have been seeing Jim, you know, we, we, the ones that know me, say, I know where you came from. I just don't know how you got from where you were to where you are now. And, and that was an interesting and and difficult process. And we, we kept saying for a while, you know, we're gonna write us through it. We're gonna write a book, we're gonna tell it. But I didn't wanna do it until we really had a complete cycle that we've gone from having nothing to having a little something and, and we finally decided that we would do it. My life story is woven with successes but also a lot of failures. I mean it did, I didn't get there easily. And we thought, you know, there's a lot of people that get in the same spot and don't, don't know what to do.

1 (18m 27s):
And we put that down so we could have lessons that they could follow and maybe, hopefully not get into the same predicament we did. Markham Markham Money Making tip number four, it doesn't matter what industry you are in, the principles are pretty much the same. You need to have passion. You need to believe in what you do and love what you do. Very important of course, you gotta understand the, this finances you, the pricing structure, the cash flow analysis, budgeting. And also you need to surround yourself with the good people. To find good people. Ask questions, look at their experience, their drive and listen to recommendations.

1 (19m 9s):
Some of your competitors or friends can give you some great recommendations and they're right there easy to get. Find your niche, look at your competition and see where there's holes. Find where you can set yourself apart. That's really important to set yourself apart. And there's always some way to find it that everyone has a hole or an opening. If you find, if you look hard enough, generally,

0 (19m 31s):
Now Jim, you've had a very inspiring life and I know that Fire Nation is going to read this book in Dros because they're going to wanna learn more about you and your successes and your fail failures and the mark of money tips and all of that jazz. It's gonna be a blast. So for these individuals, Fire Nation who are going to consume your content, who are going to read Big Lucky, if they could do one thing differently after reading your book, what would it be?

1 (19m 60s):
Most people I find quit too early. The one of the biggest lessons you can learn is do not quit. And, and that you are made to win. God made us to win. He didn't make us to lose. We choose to lose. But made to win means you work hard, you go after it, you keep working and you will win. I, I think that's important lesson to realize you're not made to lose. There are mentors everywhere. I was lucky that Paul Newman took me under his wing. He knew I was a fish outta water. He treated me like an equal. He taught me many life lessons that have helped me throughout my life. I never charged Paul for his haircuts.

1 (20m 42s):
He always give me something that had more value to me in return. I remember one day I was cutting Paul's hair at his home in Beverly Hills. Of course his wife John Woodward walked in. Paul jumped up and said, hello, lovely lady. And kissed her hair going everywhere cuz he had a cape on hair going over as he jumped up. And I thought to myself, here's the one of the top, the top celebrity in the world, a male sex symbol of the world treating his wife like this. What must a mere mortal like me do? Find your mentor. It took me reading books to learn that I was capable of winning. I read many self, self-help books like Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People.

1 (21m 27s):
Napoleon Hill Thinking, girl, rich Norman Vincent Peel the Power Positive Thinking. But that's where I learned that we were all made to win reading books. I think books are a great way to do that and I, I had an opportunity to do that and that's how I got one of the main reasons I got to where I'm at now. I think remember, you are made to win. I think that's maybe the most important thing you can read or understand,

0 (21m 53s):
Jim, way to end with a bang, brother. So much value, so much knowledge, so much awesomeness that you shared through this entire interview. Give us the one call to action. Where can we go to find your book? Big Lucky,

1 (22m 8s):
It's on Amazon. We have a, an audiobook and an e-book. It's Amazon's number one must read for a memoir. Entrepreneurship self-help is, is really taking off well. But that's where you can do it. We'll have a print book in about a month, but the audio and e-book is available right now.

0 (22m 31s):
Fire Nation, you know this, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with JM and JLD today. So, keep up that heat and if you head over to eofire.com and just type Jim in the search bar, his show us page will pop up with everything that we talked about today, links to all that jazz. And of course, go to Amazon, get the audible book, get the get the print book. It's going to be a great way for you to learn a lot more about Jim's journey, his learnings, his successes, his failures. Big luck, Jim, thank you brother for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value bombs with the Fire Nation today.

0 (23m 11s):
For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. John,

1 (23m 16s):
It was really a pleasure, brother. You, you do a great job, and everyone loves you, man. Let's continue on the good work.

0 (23m 22s):
Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Jim and if you're ready to rock your own podcast, well I have a free podcasting course for you where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. Visit freepodcastcoures.com, free podcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. If you're looking for highly vetted US-based fractional virtual contractors, then check out Belay. Belay is exclusively offering Fire Nation their latest e-book Delegate to Elevate for free. Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation text FIRE.

0 (24m 5s):
That's F I R E to 55123 to get started. Outbound Squad hosted by Jason Bay is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. One of my faves, the monthly app with Jason Ethan, where they share hacks, tips and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad wherever you get your podcasts.