0 (2s):
Boom shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Inclusion and Marketing. Today we'll be breaking down from couch surfing to 30 million in annual revenue based off of one Focus Progress To drop these value bombs, I brought Tim Angel into EOFire Studios.. Tim's dad fired him and he was living on couches. When the iPad came out, he decided to be the best solution in the world for iPad cases. In two years, he almost went on a business, so he went direct to consumer, consistently improved, got five stars, scaled up advertising, and now has 30 million in revenue per year.

0 (46s):
And today we'll be chatting about trying, failing, making the best product. We'll talk about Amazon being crowded. We'll talk about manufacturing, we'll talk about burnouts and motivation and so much more. Fire Nation and a big thank you for sponsoring today’s episode goes to Tim and our sponsors,

HubSpot Podcast Network (1m 4s):
Sales Evangelist hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales. Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist, wherever you get your podcasts.

NetSuite (1m 30s):
It's time to check out NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system, streamlining, accounting, financial management, inventory, HR and more. Right now, Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist designed to give you consistently excellent performance absolutely free at NetSuite.com/fire. That's NetSuite.com/fire.

0 (1m 50s):
Tim say What's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 60s):
Hey, what's up guys? Thanks for having me on. Well, I don't know if, if most people actually disagree with this, this one, but you get what you tolerate. So you know, if you tell yourself you must have something, then you have a much better chance of getting it than something that you want. You know, usually what we have right now is things that we must have and not what we want. So I feel like that's kind of like really what's what's key. I mean, you just think about life and anything that you like, there was no option. You must have it.

1 (2m 40s):
You one way or the other, you eventually get to it and you get it, you know? And you know, I think like also a main thing is there's no destination in your journey. There's just milestones. So you better enjoy it because if not When, you get to your so-called Destination, you're gonna be devastated because it's not gonna be what you expect.

0 (3m 1s):
Fire Nation, I've interviewed over 4,000 entrepreneurs and I can tell you an unbelievably common theme is that they say, Hey, I accomplished my goal and the next day was the worst day of my life. Because it was the progress, it was the gradual realization of that goal. When, you wake up without a goal, without meaning, without relevancy, that's a problem. So you're so right about those milestones. About the day-to-day. And we're talking about going from crowd Surfing to $30 million in Annual revenue based off of one focus progress. So many try and many fail, but you did it Tim. How did you make a best selling product on Amazon?

0 (3m 44s):
And then how can we follow that model?

1 (3m 46s):
You don't really need to get rid of your problems, you need to get better at solving problems because the only people without problems are dead. So you, you don't ever want to get rid of your problems, you just wanna get better at solving them. As far as making a bestselling product on, on Amazon, in my opinion, you know what you want to do there is you don't want to go where the whole crowd is going, where they're fighting over price, you know, very cheap and expensive products. What you're gonna wanna do is, is focus on the other area, which you have very few competitors, which is like the more higher end quality products.

1 (4m 26s):
Then you have more, more money to spend on advertising. And if you're able to spend more money on advertising, you're gonna be able to beat the competition. So what you want to do is you wanna find an area on Amazon that you're really interested in find, you know, in that area, find like the top 10 products. But you don't want to just do the best sellers because a lot of times the best sellers are really cheap products. So you want to get a couple of the best selling and expensive product. You want to get a couple of the more expensive, you know, still really good selling products. You want to get a couple of the highest rated products. You want to take all like five or 10 of those products, order them, get 'em in your hands, check 'em all out, and go through all the reviews and all the different products and see what people like, what people dislike, you know?

1 (5m 17s):
And then you can, you kind of compile all those features that people love, put 'em together, put your own spin on it, and then any issues that people don't like, you wanna try and improve that or solve that issue. So you put all that together and you can create your own product that's unique. So you're gonna have a better product, you're gonna be able to have more margin for spending money on advertising and you're gonna be able to crush competition. Because I feel like on Amazon it started out where it's all cheap products and it's still a lot of inexpensive products that people go there for. But also a lot of times it's people they need something immediately, you know, the next day or same day.

1 (5m 58s):
So they're going on there to find that solution. So I feel like it's, it's gone from being inexpensive products to more of like, you know, a luxury for people to get a product fast, you know? So there's definitely a huge crowd that want to buy a quality product and they want it now and they want to, they want to buy from a brand that is American, you know? So even if you're manufacturing overseas, if you're American brand, you're still gonna have, you know, way more of a pull than, than the other Chinese cheap competition products

0 (6m 35s):
And Fire Nation just wait till that same day. Drone delivery becomes available all over the place. Exactly. It's gonna be pretty exciting and pretty crazy times and they're definitely heading in that direction. And one thing that I love that Tim said they wanna circle back on is, you know about those price wars, about the cheap products. There's a great quote by Seth Godin that I love is that the problem with the race to the bottom is that you just might win Fire Nation. That's not a race. You wanna win a race to the bottom, the cheapest, you know, the most accessible. You don't want that kind of race. You don't wanna be involved in that race. You wanna identify a luxury premium item that you have great margins on and that you can beat the competition because you know what's missing.

0 (7m 23s):
'cause you're filling that void. Now we always hear that Amazon is too crowded in 2023, in 2024 and beyond for anyone to really be successful. Is this true Tim?

1 (7m 35s):
It is true when you're competing on price, you know, but when you're focusing in the other area where it's a high quality product, there's way less competition. You know, on Amazon right now for our iPad cases, we, we have like, I would say 50,000 at least competitors and When, you go to like our actual competitors at Higher Price, you're talking about maybe less than 10. So it's a big difference. Well

0 (8m 4s):
I think it was a stroke of genius for you with the iPad cases that I really believe you have to think Fire Nation about a product that people are really gonna be willing to spend more money on because they're gonna come in contact with it every single day. I mean, people that have iPads, they love their iPads, they're using it every single day. They're not gonna want something flimsy that looks bad, that breaks, they're gonna be like, you know what, if there's something I am gonna spend money on, it's gonna be on something that I want to show off that I'm proud of, that's reliable, that's beautiful, that's well created and manufactured and all these different things. Like, so that's why I think a product like that, you need to sit down and think about Fire Nation because that's where people are going to spend on premium Goods.

0 (8m 48s):
Now manufacturing's a really scary concept for a lot of us Tim because we're just, you know, like what, where do you even start? I mean, you picture all these manufacturing companies in China and even in the United States and all over Asia, wherever it is, it's just scary in general. So what have you learned over the years as the best method to work with manufacturers?

1 (9m 10s):
I couldn't find a good manufacturer when I was over here and it was a roadblock for me. And I was like, okay, this is something I must figure out and I must do. So I'm not gonna sit around here and, you know, tell myself it's, it's too difficult. So I just bought a plane ticket and I figured it out over there, you know, kind of like burn the boats. So you have no choice but to succeed. But you know, what you can do now is, what I ended up doing actually when I got into China trying to figure it out, is go on to Alibaba and contact manufacturers there and you know, start visiting them and see which ones which one you feel most comfortable with.

1 (9m 55s):
You know, especially if it, you're able to meet the owner the first day, you know, that's, that's a great relationship to have. So I feel like A, lot of companies now they're doing business with manufacturers just online. So, if you fly there and you build a relationship with the owner or you know, people in the factory, you're gonna have priority over all those other customers that they never, you know, put a face to. And that's gonna be, that's gonna be really important. Yeah, so definitely also another thing you want to do is whenever you place your first order with them, you wanna place the smallest order you can because pretty much always the first order, you're gonna have some issues that you're gonna need to tweak and fix.

1 (10m 46s):
So don't go crazy and order, you know, a bunch of pieces that you, you think you're gonna sell and you know, let them know. Let them know that, that you just wanted to order a little bit so you can test it out and make some tweaks. Also, you know, they're gonna be, they're gonna be telling you a lot as you're going through the manufacturing product process. You know, this is impossible. That is impossible. You cannot accept. They're pretty much always gonna say no at first. You know, oh, can we change this to do that? No, because blah blah blah. Really, most of the time they're just too lazy to do it and it's too difficult. But you gotta push and push and push 'em to try and get them to do that. And originally what I did when I went over there and found a manufacturer that I was comfortable with, I gave them my prototype that I made out of card stock, like thick paper and they were able to, you know, make a sample within a couple days.

1 (11m 42s):
Then I was able to look at that sample and say, Hey, let's change this, change that. And then they start working on that, making those changes. I go back to my hotel, I stay there for a few days and I'm focusing on spreading the word or doing whatever else I can. So it's kind of a lot of that back and forth. And over that time of you being there for a couple weeks or couple months figuring out that product, you build a relationship with them and you're gonna have priority over any other buyer that's just going to them through online

0 (12m 11s):
Fire. Nation, lots of great advice here. I mean, again, people love saying no or impossible 'cause they just want you to make it easier for them. They just want you to go away. They just wanna do what's easy for them. They want to be lazy. Don't let it happen. If you want to be great and we have so much to talk about around this topic, when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024 Fire Nation. New one is here and that means new goals, more growth in upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads. Let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year. The new Hubspot Sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps.

0 (12m 52s):
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0 (13m 34s):
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0 (14m 17s):
Everything you need to grow all in one place and having everything all in one place is priceless right now, Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist designed to give you consistently excellent performance absolutely free at NetSuite.com/fire. That's NetSuite.com/fire to get your own KPI Checklist NetSuite.com/fire Tim. We're back. Burnout is very common with entrepreneurs. It just happens all the time for various reasons. How do you personally not run out of motivation for what you do?

1 (14m 51s):
When my back is against the wall, that's when I work really hard. I make a lot of progress. I things are going good, I have a little bit of money in the bank and then I start to relax a little bit and do a little bit less and things just kind of, you know, fall apart because for some reason I'm trying to put myself subconsciously back into that position of my back being against the wall and where I really make progress. So over the years I was, I was really, it really bothered me, you know, like, why do I keep doing this to myself, sabotaging myself, you know? So I feel like what really changed it for me was going to Tony Robbins, a Tony Robbins seminar called Business Mastery.

1 (15m 42s):
And you know, that's really expensive and I, and I, at that time I felt like I was making the biggest mistake of my life 'cause it's a $10,000 ticket, but it turned out, you know, because I try everything even, you know, I'm just like used to failing at everything so that at least I get one good win and then I, I try another 10 things and you know, one of those things work. But went to Tony Robbins and not only did it change my, my mental mindset, but it also changed. I mean, just everything in my life, you know, I went from, I would say every day being at like a five out of 10 to going to like a eight or nine out of 10.

1 (16m 23s):
Just, you know, just feeling great and really positive and not going through that same issue of losing motivation. So what really, what really got me there was thinking about, I think what I was before, I was just focusing on myself like, oh, I don't need any more money. I got some money in the bank. You run outta motivation when it's just for yourself, but When, you put that on other people, like your family for instance, like for me, like there's a lot of, a lot of pressure like to, to rush in order to make, to build up money, grow the business because there's a lot of new treatments coming out, medical treatments for people.

1 (17m 4s):
So, you know, my family, I always wanna make sure they're safe, my family and friends, you know, and if they get sick or something happens, I want to be able to offer them that treatment to save their life. So I feel like the pressure is on me. I have all these people that, that rely on me. So I'm doing it for all these other people, which the motivation for that never runs out. So not only family and friends, but also some, some type of charity that I have a, a tie to emotionally. Like for me, I went through really dark depression when I was younger and I know how terrible it can be. So I think about those people that are suffering really bad and that I need to push and keep going so that, so that I can help them get, get people outta that dark place.

1 (17m 54s):
It makes me feel like I have a purpose, you know? Like I'm here for a reason.

0 (18m 0s):
Fire Nation, these are words coming from an entrepreneur who has been down that road, who has hit roadblocks, got knocked down, got back up and created quite a special business. Now Tim, I wanna end on a high note here. I want you to give Fire Nation one key takeaway that you want them to really get from our conversation today. One meaningful tidbits that you want them to remember today, tomorrow, next month.

1 (18m 29s):
You can only fail if you quit when you're trying to do something. If it doesn't work, try something else. If that doesn't work, try something else. If that doesn't work, try something else. And guess what? You just keep doing that and the only way you can fail is if you stop trying things.

0 (18m 43s):
Now, Tim, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, what call to action do you have for our listeners today?

1 (18m 50s):
You can contact me on my Instagram, which is Timothy Charles Angel. You can also email me at Tim@zugucase.com. My website is zugucase.com. We are the only iPad case in Amazon's top 100 that has five stars. There's only four cases in Amazon's top 100 that have five stars and all four of them are Zugu Case. So it's always important to make progress and constantly improve and eventually you'll get to five stores, five stars, and you can scale your business up like crazy.

0 (19m 27s):
Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with TA and JLD today. So keep up that heat. For links to everything that we talked about, visit EOFire.com, type Tim in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Tim, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (19m 50s):
Thanks so much, man, really appreciate it. Have a good one.

0 (19m 53s):
Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Tim for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there. Or on the flip side, Sales Evangelist hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales. Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn.

0 (20m 34s):
Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. It's time to check out NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system, streamlining, accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more. Right now, Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist designed to give you consistently excellent performance absolutely free at NetSuite.com/fire. That's NetSuite.com/fire.