From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2020. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Paula Blankenship is a life-long entrepreneur who hit it big in her 50’s with a company she started in her kitchen, Heirloom Traditions Paint.
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Heirloom Traditions – Learn more about Heirloom Traditions and connect with Paula on social media!
3 Value Bombs
1) In today’s online world it is unnecessary to have retailers for your product.
2) As soon as you start the business make sure to learn how to be an ad guru.
3) Skip all the stuff in between; do not go the retail route and instead jump straight to success.
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Podopolo: The best podcast listening app in the world is here! Visit Podopolo.com, download the app for free, mention John Lee Dumas (my Podopolo username) when you sign up, and start listening now!
HubSpot: Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better and get a special offer of 20% off on eligible plans at HubSpot.com/eof!
Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: Why Put Someone Between You and Your Customer to Share in the Profits While You Do All of the Work? with Paula Blankenship
[1:10]- Paula shares something interesting about herself that most people do not know.
- She has zero formal education and started her business at the age of 50
[2:06] – Are retailers necessary in today’s online world?
- No; it is unnecessary to have retailers for your product.
- You can give your customers the benefits of buying directly from you rather than just having the product sitting on a shelf in a retail store.
[7:03] – Paula shares how Heirloom Traditions Paint came to be, and how they used social media as their very own QVC network
- Started with great hopes of all the retailers around the country teaching and educating people how to use their products
- Used social media for tutorials and real-time interaction with their customers.
- Felt good to encourage people, build other people’s confidence, and produce products that help people beautify their home.
[9:58] – Paula gives a specific example of a social media post that helped the business in terms of engagement.
[13:13] – Is Amazon a necessary platform for an e-commerce company?
- Absolutely, Paula uses Amazon 99% of the time to purchase products.
- You have to sell something with enough margins
[15:09] – A timeout to thank our sponsors!
- Podopolo: The best podcast listening app in the world is here! Visit Podopolo.com, download the app for free, mention John Lee Dumas (my Podopolo username) when you sign up, and start listening now!
- HubSpot: Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better and get a special offer of 20% off on eligible plans at HubSpot.com/eof!
[17:14] – When should you take the risk and up your marketing ad budget?
- As soon as you start the business make sure to learn how to be an ad guru.
- It’s better to create your own video and make it simple.
- Learn Facebook Ads and set up your Facebook business page.
- Track your diminishing returns to scale up.
[23:29] – Paula talks about starting a successful business later in life
- Paula wanted to take a chance and do something different.
- You can do everything that you set your mind to.
[25:53] – What are the keys to success for being a direct to consumer e-commerce company in today’s market?
- Internet is the key to success.
- Get online.
- Be real.
[28:34] – Paula’s parting piece of guidance
- Skip all the stuff in between; do not go the retail route and jump straight to success.
[30:54] – Paula’s call to action for Fire Nation.
- Heirloom Traditions – Learn more about Heirloom Traditions and connect with Paula on social media!
[32:06] – Thank you to our Sponsors!
- Podopolo: The best podcast listening app in the world is here! Visit Podopolo.com, download the app for free, mention John Lee Dumas (my Podopolo username) when you sign up, and start listening now!
- HubSpot: Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better and get a special offer of 20% off on eligible plans at HubSpot.com/eof!
Transcript
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 Being Boss. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire episode from the archives. So the giveaway may not be active and we'll be asking the question, why put someone in between you and your customer to share in the profits while you do all the work. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Paula Blankenship into EOFire Studios. Paula is a lifelong entrepreneur who hit it big in her fifties with a company she started in her kitchen, Heirloom Traditions Paint. Today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about why it's unnecessary to have retailers for your product. We'll talk about how to become an ad guru and how to skip all the stuff in between.
0 (42s):
Don't go retail. Jump straight into success and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Paula and ours sponsors. The best podcast listening and discovery app in the world is here and it's called Podopolo. Visit Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention John Lee Dumas, my Podopolo username when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. Marketing Made Simple hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing work. In a recent episode, Amy Porterfield shared her five email Marketing Secrets for long-term Business growth.
0 (1m 25s):
Listen to marketing Made Simple. Wherever you get your podcasts, Paula, say What's up to Fire Nation And share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.
1 (1m 38s):
Oh, hey Fire Nation, thanks for having me here. I am excited to share my story and I think one important thing that I want to inspire others with is I have zero formal education and started this amazing business at 50 and was a single mother and trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do in life at 50. So I've been doing a lot of things and chasing a lot of rabbits, but this turned out to be the golden goose and I'm, I'm looking forward to telling you my story.
0 (2m 6s):
Well, we have found the golden goose and we're gonna talk all about your story, Paula, and I've already teased Fire Nation with all the greatest we're gonna be chatting about today with this overall audio masterclass on why the heck should you put somebody between you and your customers to share in the profits when you can just do all the gosh darn work yourself. And let's just dive right into that because a lot of people just assume that retailers are necessary in the online world, but you're here to say, no, they're not. So tell us more.
1 (2m 35s):
Well, I'm gonna give you the digested version of that because that's kind of the essence of our story and where we are today versus where we've been because like you say, you do believe as a, an entrepreneur and a product inventor let's say, or creator, that being on a retail shelf is where you need to be. And engaging retailers, selling wholesale and creating that wholesale market place for your product and seeing it at Walmart, you know, that's kind of the crown of the, the victory walk as you would say. But we have kind of came the whole circle. And in today's world with the online world, Amazon and, and everybody carrying around the television will say in their hand, there is absolutely no need in this world to wholesale your product to anyone.
1 (3m 20s):
You need to control it. And I believe we've learned all of that the hard way we've gotten our products to, I think to the big guys, if you wanna call it that. And we've learned that they are only our competition online. Once we cut them that great wholesale deal to get in their door, they make a lot of promises on the, on the front end and none of those have been delivered. And then they ultimately create, I'll say shell accounts online and they beat you up online with your own products. So we've came the full circle and and made the whole walk and we're back to square one. And we are the only people selling our products online today. And we're doing the leg work, we're getting out there and educating the consumer via our social media, telling our story, showing how our products work and taking the questions.
1 (4m 8s):
So the point is, why in the world do you wanna put someone between you and the people who are buying the product? If you're gonna cut someone a deal, why not cut someone a deal that's buying the product versus a retailer who's just gonna sit it on the shelf? And as we all know, products don't speak and you can't really buy any kind of marketing material that makes someone stop at the shelf and pick up your can of paint and look at it and read about it. It just looks like a generic can of paint. So if I'm gonna do all that work, I'm gonna be the one who reaps the benefits and gives my customer the benefit of buying it from me. I'm gonna be able to give them, give them that discount and pass that along to them versus sitting it on a shelf at a
0 (4m 45s):
Retailer. Now a lot of people assume that retailers are just there to help us grow our businesses and that they're actually kind of necessary to grow our businesses. But you know, you're taking the opposite side here where in a lot of cases they can hurt our businesses, they can stagnate our growth. So can you kind of talk specifically about what you mean in that area?
1 (5m 3s):
Well, we started, I started this business in my kitchen about seven years ago. And like I said earlier, you know, the first big claim to fame to me would be to be getting that product out there on a s you know, so-called big box on the shelf. And my goal would've been to get it at Home Depot, Lowe's, somewhere like that. We got it into Camping World. We also got into some of the hardware buying groups. And lo and behold, just like I said, found out that once they put it into the warehouse, the buying groups, it was still on us to come to the shows participate, $20,000 a pop to go there, spend a week of our time, the marketing, then discount it to even the people who already had it on their shelves.
1 (5m 43s):
And still they didn't do any work. They weren't willing to do any type of, they weren't talking about the product because they already had big paint brands on their shelves and so on. So they would sit in our product on the shelf if, if someone come in the door asking for it, of course, course they would point them in that direction. But that's old school thinking. And if you are a product person out there and you think that is your way to the marketplace, let me help you and save you a lot of time in a lot of years. Just get online yourself, start creating your own buzz. If you're gonna create that buzz, then start building your mailing list, start talking to your customers one-on-one, and you be the voice for your product. And I promise you that is a successful way to scale your business today.
1 (6m 26s):
And with Amazon and all the pieces that Amazon offers us, even to scale our business globally, that is the way to grow your business without being literally in a stranglehold with retailers who are, again, your competition, who are going to, even if they give you the promise upfront that they're not going to sell online, ultimately they're faced with the same issues all retailers are faced with today. Customers are buying online, so they're also forced to the online channel themselves. So they're gonna put your product out there and they're gonna discount it under you because you've given them a deal up front to put it out there in their store. So it, it's a very fine line, but we finally decided that was what was killing us and keeping us from our own growth and our own prosperity.
1 (7m 9s):
And once we decided to jump the fence there basically, and cut free of all that, our business has taken off e e exponentially. It's just been amazing what's happened with our growth.
0 (7m 19s):
Well let's take this opportunity to talk a little bit about your business, heirloom traditions, paint, and kind of give us a little background story behind that and then let's kind of segue that into how you've been able to use social media as your very own Q V C network to grow heirloom traditions, paint.
1 (7m 36s):
Well, that's exactly what we've done. You know, we started off with all great hopes thinking that everyone, all of these retailers around the country were gonna be able to teach and tell people about how to use our products. And we started off into the chalk paint world and chalk painting had been around for a lot of years. It required a lot of layers and a lot of process and almost needed to be taught by these retailers. And so that was our first reach to selling. And that was, you know, at least it got us off the ground. And as we began to learn and to see that people struggled with so many choices out there, we came out with a product, or I created a product called All In One Paint.
1 (8m 18s):
And All in one Paint simply brought all of those multi-layered processes into one can. And it really simplified the process for us. So teaching, it wasn't really a necessity, it simply required you to clean the piece and paint it and be done. You could paint your interior, your exterior projects, and the paint performed beautifully no matter if you were a novice of painting. Never picked up a paintbrush before we even gave you the proper tools. We created the tools, the cleaner and the paint product that really gave people success, painting their kitchen cabinets, things they would probably have never tackled in their life, furniture inside their home, their bathroom vanities, you name it, people paint it with this product, it paints leathers and vinyls as well.
1 (8m 60s):
It gives you an amazingly beautiful finish. So once we gave the customer this encouragement, and then once they try it, we put a free sample in their hand. And once they try that, they are simply amazed at what they can do with the product. So that has kind of been our claim to fame, I guess you would say. We've given that customer the courage and the, we've instilled that confidence in her that she, because of our social media and giving her those tutorials and literally answering her questions in real time, talking to them individually and then going back and answering the questions in the timeline and really giving them the links, sharing videos with them from YouTube, Facebook, wherever they may be sharing those videos that give them a step by step, literally.
1 (9m 45s):
So we're handholding them and helping them and encouraging them to tackle things that were, they were scared to do that would've paid thousands of dollars to professionals. And they get a professional look themselves and it's, you know, it's very inspiring to them and it's a confidence builder for a lot of young women, older women too. So we find a great pleasure in that. The testimonies are amazing and it, it's wonderful to produce a product that really helps people beautify their home. I
0 (10m 11s):
Love specific examples and I know my audience does too. So is there like a social media post that you can kind of recall that you've shared in the past, you know, six months to 12 months, that's just really done well as far as engagement in people just really being grateful for you putting that content out. Does anything come to mind there?
1 (10m 28s):
Well, there's several, but one particular one that does come to mind, and it's was one that kind of took me by surprise. It was a cabinet that we painted. It was an antique, an older piece, not an antique, we'll say just an old piece of furniture that literally was some, someone had gave it to us. It was to toss to the curb, it would've gone into the landfill. This is a very green product as well too. It helps people keep things around and sometimes good, sustainable furniture. So this was one of those, it fell into that category. It, you know, it kind of passed its prime. And we painted it and we asked people to tell us how long they thought it would take us to paint it, start to finish. And generally people are used to painting furniture that takes hours upon hours, maybe, you know, a day or two. And we painted this thing and they were guessing along the way at, at about 40, well, 47 minutes or somewhere in there, start to finish talking along the way and the whole thing.
1 (11m 16s):
But this thing has had millions of views, millions of shares, all kinds of people are asking because they see it live, start to finish. And then they, then they can really wrap their head around, wow, she really did that in front of me and I really saw start to finish this piece painted. So with the millions of views, you know, it just speaks for itself. And lots of people on that post are engaged with us enough that they say, Hey, I wanna, I want to try this product. You know, you've, you've encouraged me, I'm gonna give it a try now. If you can do it, I can do it. And that's what we try to, that's what we try to teach. And I think that's what we, what what we do well, that's what has caused us to be
0 (11m 52s):
Successful. And I love, love that you're bringing the point up, that it's not like you brought in this professional video crew with all this lighting and all these stage effects and all these different things. It's just like a real video with real people doing a real thing. And people resonate with that foundation, they connect with it, you know, that reality type of social media can really connect and can click. And it doesn't take a huge budget to do something like that. It just takes you,
1 (12m 14s):
Oh
0 (12m 15s):
My goodness, setting up a camera and doing the work.
1 (12m 17s):
Yeah, an iPhone. I mean, really we have all the equipment and we have actually bought all sorts of editing bays, everything. We have all of that. And you know, we ab test our, our videos sometimes against our lives and our lives outperform any of the edited pieces that we put out there. I mean, it's, it's amazing the difference between them. But people want real content. They don't wanna, especially when they're trying to assess if they want to try this product, they don't wanna see an edited video where it's been photoshopped and made to look beautiful when it's not. And another thing I think is important today is, you know, we live in a society. Everybody is editing their photos to look perfect, their homes are perfect, their Pinterest, everything's Pinterest perfect.
1 (12m 57s):
A lot of people can't live up to that in their own home. And they feel almost defeated by that somewhat. So even on our Instagram and on our Facebook, we're very real. And we show, we try to show people that things aren't perfect. You know, this looks wonderful, but is it perfect? No, you can definitely find fault in anything. And I think that helps women to see that we're not all perfect creatures and our homes aren't just immaculate and you know, we live with animals and husbands and you know, children and so on. And you know, we're not always living in that Pinterest perfect world. So I, I believe our social media conveys that. Let's
0 (13m 30s):
Talk about Amazon for a second cuz a lot of people just think, and they assume that Amazon is an absolute necessary platform for any e-commerce company. Is that true?
1 (13m 40s):
Oh, a hundred percent be and, and here's why in a nutshell, there is no place that, there is no website that I get up in the morning and put on my clothes and I sit down on my drink, my coffee. There is not a single website that comes to mind that says, Hey, I need to go visit website X. But I do get up in the morning and sometimes think, Hey, I need to go to Amazon and buy some things. So with that being said, where is it? People go to shop today. Amazon, I always check Amazon. It may not end up buying everything from Amazon, but there's just a few websites that I can think of. I'll go to eBay, Amazon is 99% of where I'm gonna purchase everything. It leaves things visually in your cart and reminds you to go back there. And if you bought something from a seller before, there it is again.
1 (14m 22s):
It reminds me, hey, maybe you're out of, you know, this product. And sure enough, sometimes even add those to my cart too. And I know everybody else does. So Amazon to me, you know, everybody says, oh, it's expensive to put your products on there. You have to sell something with enough margin to cover that. But the wholesale versus Amazon, there's not even a comparison. I mean the wholesale is going going to at least be a 50% off less participation parti, you know, all of the discounts that you have to take to ultimately do a wholesale business with say a big box, then you say, Hey, I've gotta give Amazon 25% of retail. Heavens, let's take the Amazon route any day.
0 (15m 1s):
Fire Nation, if you think Paula is done dropping value bombs, she is just getting started. We have some doozies coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Ready to dish your subpar podcast listening app and download an interactive app that has every feature you want and need with more great features being added all the time. The app is Podopolo and you can download it free and start listening right now at Podopolo.com. Podopolo gives you access to every podcast at your fingertips with easy, discoverability audio and video podcast in every genre and language and instant recommendations. So the perfect podcast and live streams find you without you having to lift a finger.
0 (15m 43s):
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2 (16m 12s):
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0 (16m 42s):
So Paula, we're back and I wanna talk about upping our marketing ad budgets cuz it's risky to do those type of things to put more money into ads into our marketing. So when is the right time to do something like that?
1 (16m 56s):
Well, I think I got a good take on that. You know, in your business you try to be everything, wear all the hats, and then you think, hey, what I can't do, I can YouTube university it or I can hire it done, hire a professional, hire someone to come in and a consultant. So early in our business, of course we didn't have a big ad budget, but we did try to hire some people to help us do Google AdWords to even do Facebook ads for us. And I will say that was absolutely disastrous and almost discouraging for me to even venture back over to that side of the fence. If I had have my business would've changed three years ago, four years ago maybe, and I'd be sitting in a different seat than I am today. Even so I, I got turned off by all the people who were taking our money literally.
1 (17m 41s):
And, and I hate to say that because everybody's not in the same boat obviously, but we're in a big city. We chose some people who we felt like were great professionals to help us do Google AdWords and Facebook ads and literally never showed us anything as far as the analytics from the ads. And maybe that was our fault. I don't know. They weren't willing to share those things with us. They were just saying, Hey, your ads didn't perform, you know, here's $10,000 and your ads didn't perform. Okay, now what do we do? You know? So I was saying, well maybe the people don't wanna buy our product. So, you know, we didn't even try to conquer that for a long time. But finally I said, you know, the only way we're ever gonna get past this hurdle is if we learn how to do this ourselves. Of course, being an entrepreneur and you know, a small business, you're bombarded with so many different levels of your business from you know, just the daily ins and outs of business, creating and ma manufacturing a product, employees, all of those things.
1 (18m 32s):
You have all that on your plate. It's hard then to say, Hey, I'll just be the ad guru. But you know what, you have to be the ad guru. You have to get in there and learn how to do Facebook ads. You have to learn how to create video yourself. You can rely on others. But I, I'll tell you, it was a game changer when I learned to do simple editing just in I movies. I mean, that's all it takes. You don't have to be a wiz and all these features and all these flashy things, really, people don't wanna see it anyway. They don't like transitions and all that. They want the just the simple edits that clean up the video, take out the Oz and so on, that that's the stuff they want. So once I learned to do that, Melissa here in my office learned how to do Facebook ads. It was astronomical the change in our business.
1 (19m 14s):
We started off with a small budget. We started out putting a couple hundred dollars on some things that we thought were valuable in the organic world, some videos that were doing well just on our Facebook page and we threw some money on them and put them in, you know, created a a business page and Facebook don't do boost posts by, that's just throwing money away. Do something that you can really look at how many people came back into your shopping cart. And we didn't know that forever. I was throwing money on Boost Post and just giving Facebook money. Literally there was no,
0 (19m 41s):
Here you go, mark, more money for you Mark. You need more money, mark. Yeah,
1 (19m 44s):
Here, here Mark needs a new home. Yeah. So yeah, we were doing that. I didn't know any different. I thought, hey, they'll throw it out there to more people. Maybe they did, but there was no way to measure that. So measurable analytics are in Facebook in the business page. So set up your Facebook business page, get back there, learn the back end of your Facebook page, learn what your engagement is, learn how many people really see the stuff you're putting out there organically. Then you can measure that against your ad, your ad revenues. Once they begin to come in, you can see that change. So we did, we started out with the simplest of, of our organic videos that were doing. Well, started taking those, putting some dollars on them and very low budget. I'm gonna, I mean we started out with probably 2 50, 200 $50 just to see what that would do.
1 (20m 24s):
And she would, Melissa would come back to me and say, Hey, you know, we got nine times return on that. Wow. And it was almost, I couldn't even believe it, you know, nine times what, you know, what did it really turn into? Because we had had such a jaded experience before, it was hard for me to believe that that actually turned into real money, you know? And we carried on and I said, we'll put 500 on it, you know, if you can see this. So I happened to catch old Gary Vaynerchuk, I caught him in one of one of his videos and he, he was saying the very thing that was kind of haunting me, if you have a piece of a video that's doing well for you, he said, take that and kind of double down on it. So I said, all right, well let's take that, that, you know, that video that's doing well, let's put a thousand dollars on it. So she starts tracking this and showing me this and you know, she did spreadsheet and showing me, hey, it's brought this many new customers and this many people went to the landing page and this many signed up for the email page and so on.
1 (21m 12s):
So she started kind of breaking it out and doing different small videos. Well right now we spend about $2,000 a day on Facebook ads and we're doing about 15 the return on our investments about 15 times. Wow. And that's phenomenal. Phenomenal. So you can imagine we're willing to even put more on there on any given day.
0 (21m 31s):
Yeah. But you've gotta keep tracking Fire Nation. I know. That's why I love that Paula is when she has that person in her office with a focus on it because there can be a law of diminishing returns. Like it's not just because you're getting 15 x can you now put 15,000 and get 15 x on that? Like hopefully you can. But at the same time you can, you've gotta track, like you've gotta see and say, Hey, am I able to continue to scale up while I'm getting similar returns? And the answer is absolutely yes. If you're tracking, if you're doing the right things, if you're keeping the finger on the
1 (21m 59s):
Pulse, oh we look at it hard every day, every
0 (22m 1s):
Single
1 (22m 1s):
Day and we change the, you know, we change the content around. Sure. We change those videos out if we see one kind of dying off and hey, don't forget about it because if it worked for you at one time, it'll work again. So kind of put it on the back burner, throw something new out there, see how it does, put a little small budget on it. And what Gary V was saying there was, he was saying, Hey, take small budgets and put on several things, see what returns, then take the one that did well and then kind of rock and roll with that. That's exactly what we did.
0 (22m 25s):
And police, Fire Nation, if you're able to take things in-house like Paula did, like you have to because nobody's gonna care about your business better than you or your team. A hundred percent. It's just, it's just the reality. Like I'm not trying to to talk bad about the agencies out there cuz I'm sure there's some great ones, but the reality is agencies wanna find more clients once they have you as a client, they're spending their time looking for more clients where they, they you need people to be spending, be spending time working on your business, looking for other clients. And one thing that's right, I love Paula about your story specifically is that you literally started heirloom traditions paint in your fifties. So share the Fire Nation. Yeah. Why it's possible to start a successful business later in life.
1 (23m 7s):
Well, you know, like I said, I had done a lot of things in my life and I have always been successful. But to be uber successful, I had not, you know, it depends on, what do you call successful? Had I always made a good living? Yes. But to say I've made this kind of living. No. And the reason being is I took a chance, I picked up my, my son and I, I moved to a city, my parents passed away at the same time and around the same time of life. And I was living in a small town that I'd grown up in and been a retailer for 25 years in the furniture business. And I was satisfied with that. You know, I was doing that, doing well. And 2008 my business turned off like a water faucet. You know, it was just what was going on in the, as we all know in the economy and politics were driving that.
1 (23m 51s):
And anyway, I said, I gotta do something different. Went to work for a fellow who walked in my door one day who hired me and went to New York City, worked for him for some years. And as I was winding down in that business, I said, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna move to Louisville, Kentucky. And I picked up, moved to Louisville and put my son in a great school here. And from that I said, I can't continue to go back and forth. I don't have anyone to watch over my son while I'm gone and away and so on. So at that point I had a great partner that I had met and he was helping me and encouraging me to find something that I wanted to do with myself outside of the travel. And he said, what would you do? I said, well, I'd be in the furniture business.
1 (24m 32s):
And so I developed this paint line thinking I was going to be doing some sort of an online business painting furniture with an awesome paint and didn't know this paint at the time. But since I had always been around coatings as a designer, commercial designer, that's what I was doing in the northeast was doing high-rise. I decided that hey, I, maybe I'll create this cool paint line and start painting these fun colors on furniture. And that's what I did in my kitchen. And you know, don't let people tell you because you don't have a chemical background, that you can't create a paint line. Yes you can. You can do anything you set your mind to today with the internet and everything that we have. If you just put your mind to it, you can do literally anything you wanna do today.
1 (25m 15s):
And that's a great, that's a great time we're living in. And I just encourage you,
0 (25m 19s):
Let's take this a step further though, because there's one thing to do something, but there's nothing to be a success in what you're doing. So let's kind of talk about some of the keys to success that you found and actually being a direct to consumer e-commerce company. And we're talking about in today's market. So now like what's working, selling directly to consumers in an e-commerce company?
1 (25m 39s):
Well, you know, I started off, like I say, making this product, what do I, what do I do with it? How do I tell the world about the product? And at that time, social media wasn't that big of a deal, you know, seven years ago. So I put it on eBay and took photos with my little whatever I had at the phone at the time. So little low res photos, put them up there, put the product, and all of a sudden people started buying it. And I was like, wow, maybe it does sell. And developed some retailers was putting there on the, on the eBay ads that I was looking for retailers. So I had about 350 retailers like overnight. And because the product was awesome and it, it just, again, I wasn't expecting that to happen. It wasn't that I set out to do that.
1 (26m 21s):
I really kind of had thought that that chalk type paint bubble had burst. It'd been around for about 20 years. So I was kind of in my mind thinking, wow, this is too bad. I didn't start this 20 years ago, right? It would've been a success. But you know, now I look back at those same guys, they're probably looking at me going, wow, you started at the right time because of the internet. And they were facing how to tell their story. The other brands trying to tell their story 20 years ago without the internet. So everything they were doing, they had to put out expensive ads and hope people picked up a magazine to find them and and so on. So nowadays with the, with the ability again, that people are carrying around this phone in their hand. And I happen to like the idea of talking to people one-on-one and going live and those things.
1 (27m 5s):
So those were encouraging to me and I just took those platforms and kind of ran with it and just being real, getting online, being real, and demoing that product, is that what set us apart and turned us into probably the number one paint company doing, you know, the small mom and pop type paint that we do has turned us into a mega-brand quick.
0 (27m 26s):
Well Paul, I know that you're being very inspiring for all our listeners today about, you know, number one, just how to kind of take the horse by the reins here and kind of control your own destiny to be in charge of it by delivering real value in a real way, like picking up an iPhone, showing people how you're doing something and then saying, you know what, we're gonna take things in-house, we're gonna test small, and then when things work, we're gonna scale. We're gonna leverage, we're going to expand. And it's just that step-by-step process, Fire Nation that's going to allow you to grow your version of success in your industry and niche of choice. And Paul, let's take a step back here as we kind of close down and what is that one major takeaway that you really wanna make sure our listeners get from everything that we've been talking about here today?
1 (28m 8s):
You know, I think my major takeaway for you is to skip all of the stuff in between. Don't go to the retail aspect as as I did, take my advice or at least do the research, take my advice, skip forward and just go straight to the Amazon channel and your own website, talk to that customer directly, guide them to Amazon, put your product in fba, get it into the FBA so they can ship it out in two days. Today it's an Amazon world. People want things overnight. You won't be able to deliver a product that quickly. In most cases, once you start getting astronomical numbers in, you won't be able to get it to them as quickly as they're wanting it unless you put it in Amazon FBA.
1 (28m 51s):
And that way you can have a channel, your website where you can offer some discounts for those who are willing to wait a bit. And then for people who want it overnight and want it on two day or one day Prime, you can sell those customers to your Amazon or send those customers over to your Amazon store and let them purchase there. So skip all that stuff in the middle and jump straight to success. And that's what I would encourage you to do. If you are an entrepreneur out there with any type of product, that is a way to success. And that would've jumped me and propelled me forward several years if someone had told me and whispered that in my ear, I could have been sitting, like I said, in a much different place today and maybe on the beach.
0 (29m 33s):
I dunno, Paul, sometimes the beach is overrated. I'm down here in Port Del Rico and I love it down here, but I still love working and inspiring others. And I think that you still love impacting the world as you're impacting it and sharing your great story in a really impactful and meaningful way. And I just really wanna say Fire Nation to you who's listening, this is exactly why you're listening because you're taking the knowledge that's Polish sharing right here, and you're gonna be able to apply it to your own business now, to your own life now to your own mission now. So you don't waste that time going down these roads that both Paula, myself, and my other guests have gone down making mistakes because we've already made those mistakes. Learn from us, go forward in the right directions.
0 (30m 12s):
And Paula, I just wanna say thank you for being on the show today. You've really just told a great story. You've impacted a lot of people by just sharing a can-do attitude. Where can Fire Nation find out more about you? Where can they follow you, learn more about your story, connect with you on a more intimate level?
1 (30m 28s):
Check us out on our website at htpaint.com and you should be able to connect to all of our social media icons there. Follow us on Facebook and we'd love to see you guys there. Thank you so much for having us and as yeah, as always, I, you know, I so love to inspire others and tell my story and so I'm really happy to
0 (30m 48s):
Be here. Well, you're doing it right now, Paula and Fire Nation. You know that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with PB and JLD today, so keep up that heat. If you head over to EOFire.com and just type Paula and our search bar, the show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about today, links to everything that she shared. And of course, ht paint.com is where you can find out some more grace stuff about Paula and her company and you can, you can connect with her over there. And Paula, I just wanna say thank you for sharing this value with my audience Fire Nation today. So thank you. We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.
1 (31m 28s):
Thank you, John.
0 (31m 29s):
Hey, Fire Nation, today's Value Bombs were brought to you today by Paula and if you want to accomplish your number one goal, how about you do it in a hundred days? And how about you do it with the Freedom Journal. The Freedom Journal is for you, Fire Nation. I have created it as a step-by-step process to set and then accomplish a smart goal specific, measurable, attainable, relevant time bounds in 100 days with daily activities, 10 day sprints, quarterly reviews. You will get there. Fire Nation. Visit the freedom journal.com, use promo code podcast for $15 off and I'll catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side.
0 (32m 11s):
The best podcast listening and discovery app in the world is here and it's called Podopolo. Visit Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention John Lee Dumas, my Podopolo username when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P O D O P o.com. Marketing Made Simple hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing work. In a recent episode, Amy Porterfield shared her five email Marketing Secrets for long-term business growth. Listen to marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.
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