A 30-Minute Hustle Playbook with Kristin Ostrander – 265
In episode 265 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Kristin discuss:
- 2:00 – How Kristin Got Started In E-commerce
- 4:00 – An Opportunity To Sell On Amazon Came Along
- 8:30 – The Early Days of E-Commerce And A Lack of Resources
- 9:30 – No Matter What Your Circumstances Are, You Can Overcome It!
- 12:00 – Consistency Is Everything
- 14:15 – How To Balance Consistency With Flexibility
- 21:15 – The 15-Minute Hustle Strategy
- 26:45 – Why People With Less Time Get A Lot More Done
- 30:00 – Examine Your Passion And Your Ultimate Goal
- 34:30 – How To Get In Touch With Kristin
Transcript
Tim Jordan:
Hi. I’m Tim Jordan, and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So, join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk-takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.
Tim Jordan:
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast, where we are talking about entrepreneurism from the eyes of the e-commerce seller. Today’s episode, we have, I guess, what we could call like an OG, like a real experienced e-commerce seller especially in the eBay Amazon game, because when you consider how short of a timeframe, all this stuff has been around, you kind of calculate in dog years.
Tim Jordan:
Right? So if I started selling or I did start selling on Amazon, like 2015, and you give that a multiple. So over the past six years, you know, multiple of, I don’t know, four? I’m like 24 years in experience, right? And we think about how fast things have escalated. Well, our guests actually started selling on e-commerce in 2003. I have to look at my notes and make sure it’s right. And I actually started selling on Amazon in 2008, which was well ahead of most people. Her name is Kristin Ostrander and she’s going to be talking not specifically about e-commerce, but actually how to focus and build our business in a time when it is so hard to focus and to get things done and take action. So welcome to the podcast, Kristin.
Kristin:
Thank you so much for having me.
Tim Jordan:
So, I want to talk a little bit about how you got into e-commerce, right? When we look at these, these dates, you know, 2003, 2008, it wasn’t popular. It wasn’t, well-known like people weren’t discussing this. So how did you end up getting into e-commerce in general? And then how did you get started on Amazon more specifically?
Kristin:
Well, my husband and I were like high school sweethearts. He was a little bit older and so we were young and I had this full scholarship to college, but I also decided to have a baby really soon. So, I was married at 19 and had a baby at 20 and I wanted to be able to stay home. That was never necessarily my true desire, but at the same time I, once I had this child, I was like, what am I going to do? I wanted to stay home with him. And so I started looking into different things and taking college classes at the same time. And I kind of reached a point in college where they were like, you have to leave because you have not declared a major and you can’t take any more classes. There really was nothing for me.
Kristin:
So I kind of took some time off there, but I still needed to make money. I started looking into things people could do from home or things that were flexible because we didn’t want to have the nine to five daycare type schedule. We want it to be able to stay home. I want to be able to stay home with my family, but still make some money. So I started looking and at that time there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunities. There was a lot of like at home type things like Mary Kay or, you know, selling, you know, multi-level marketing type things. And that was definitely not for me. I didn’t want to do parties and selling stuff from family and friends and things like that. That just wasn’t my cup of tea. And so I started looking around and I discovered eBay because that’s somewhere I was buying.
Kristin:
You know, we had a tight budget, young family, and I was buying some things for my children there. Just like, you know, used stuff and things like that. And it never occurred to me to sell anything until one day someone’s like, oh, you buy from eBay. What do you think about selling there? And so I was like, oh, I’m going to try that. First thing I ever sold was a lot of my daughter’s dresses, you know, the pretty ones where they were one time for Easter, and then you don’t know what to do with that. And they’re very expensive. So I flipped those on eBay and I was hooked since that moment.
Tim Jordan:
All right. And then Amazon came, you know, five years later than kind of the eBay epiphany, but still much earlier than most people talk about Amazon. So how did all that get started?
Kristin:
So as I was doing eBay and started to really, you know, I was doing it on my own time, I was doing it while the kids were napping and I eventually started going to yard sales and buying and flipping on eBay. And as things started to come more and more online, I was getting these advertisements from different places. And about, you know, selling on Amazon, I thought, what is this Amazon like? I didn’t, I thought Amazon was only books at the time. And I think at that time it probably was or the, I didn’t even know about it. And I got like some email was some marketing email that was like, Hey, if you like eBay, you should try selling on Amazon. I’ve just discovered that, you know, this is another place to do that. And so I checked into it and realized that the FBA program was launched maybe a couple of years before that.
Kristin:
And you could take all of your stuff and send it to them and they could send it to the customer, which was one of my biggest bottlenecks running my eBay business with the kids and everything was the shipping part. And so that was super appealing to me at the time that I could literally just put all of these books in bin boxes and send them off to the Amazon warehouse and then they would ship it to customers. And when I got my first sale and then the second sale and the third sale on the same day, there was no looking back.
Tim Jordan:
So what was the first thing you sold on Amazon?
Kristin:
It was a Fannie farmer cookbook. And I got it at a wholesale discount, like a book discount sale was like a whole case of them they had, and it was like the FASA meal version. So it was like the newest oldest version. And it was, they were all wrapped in plastic and I bought one case of them somewhere and just sold those and a couple of other used books in the same day. And the system and process, at least at that time was really pretty simple and plain. And like, I can load a hundred books in a couple of boxes, send them to Amazon and then just get these sales without with customers or pictures or listings. It was, it was fantastic.
Tim Jordan:
So, we talked about your first kid that you had in your 20 and since then you followed up with a couple more, right? Yeah, indeed. All right. So you got three kids, you’re a stay-at-home mom while also becoming a marketplace superhero on eBay and Amazon selling these things. Kind of skip forward, you since have launched a coaching program and kind of a course teaching. If I had to guess specifically these methods of, you know, private labels mixed with bundling mixed with reselling that I know we’ve talked about a little bit, that probably is geared more to be started as a side hustle, right? Like you’re not teaching, you know, Hey, go out and raise a million dollars and build a brand like this is more approachable from maybe the stay at home mom, genre of business. Is that all accurate?
Kristin:
Sort of, so, yeah, for me, it definitely started as like just a way to make money from home. But as I started to really grow and get into wholesale and get in, you know, switching from arbitrage and retail arbitrage and those things into wholesale and realizing the margins there were really pretty thin, but at that time couldn’t afford to do private label. I kind of came up with the hybrid of like the wholesale business, the wholesale bundle system. But that, although we talk about it being a side hustle, it can, it’s definitely doable and starting from a small scale, but it can be upwards of this is our full-time income for our family. It just took many years to get to that.
Tim Jordan:
Yep. And that’s my point. I didn’t mean that it is a side hustle, but the way that you teach it is easy to get started as a side hustle, right?
Kristin:
Oh, for sure.
Tim Jordan:
For sure. I think it’s so interesting in this e-commerce kind of community that we’re in that so many of the most successful business owners and e-commerce sellers never intended to become big e-commerce sellers, right. It was a side hustle, it was just an extra, you know, car payment a month. It was, you know, a way to pay for daycare, things like that. And they’ve, they’ve turned out to be big. The problem is, and I’ve talked about this in other episodes is that we as solopreneurs side hustlers don’t have the pedigree. We don’t have, you know, the typical business education. We don’t have the mentors sometimes that some of these other very intentional business owners and founders have before they even get started, right? And my suspicion is you can correct me if I’m wrong. Some of those hard lessons that you had to learn are what later on turned into the book that you wrote, which is called dream big steps small, is that right?
Kristin:
Absolutely. So doing the Amazon and the e-commerce, there wasn’t a ton of people teaching and training. There was a few like Chris Greens, like an OG of like teaching some of that stuff back in the day, I learned a lot from him and what he brought to the table and that was, you know, many, many moons ago it seems. But you know, going through all that and struggling and starting over and doing all the things it did learn a lot and I started, you know, mommy income and, you know, the Amazon files to try to help people with that because there wasn’t a ton of help for me. And so I felt like I had to like, you know, fail forward and try to really, you know, get it together and figure this stuff out. And, you know, I have a strong desire to help people because, you know, I grew up in a feast or famine kind of household, very you know, lower I to say lower middle-class even just like a single parent family.
Kristin:
And I just always wanted to do better for myself. And so, as I was, you know, growing and changing with all of this, there’s a ton of hardships and a ton of different things I had to learn. And so, writing the book was really just to give that hope that no matter where you are, no matter what your circumstances are, you can overcome that by really small steps. So the part in there that that’s kind of left out that I’ll kind of put, there is the hope that I’m speaking about is during all of this crazy time, while my, when my third child was born a week after my third child was born my husband was majorly injured at work. And all of a sudden we lost our income. Our business at that time was a side hustle and it wasn’t enough to pay all the household bills for a family of five.
Kristin:
And through that process with surgeries and physical therapy and being off work for a whole year, we lost our home to foreclosure and we were completely in financial ruin. We hung on to our small Amazon business. We had, because it was at least putting food on the table, if nothing else. And so losing the home and for, to foreclosure and all those things is such a devastating time. But how do you pick up pieces for that? One step at a time, and having this a dream to do better taking one step forward and consistently is really how we’ve gone from foreclosure to seven figures.
Tim Jordan:
That’s amazing. You know, there are a lot of people that succeed in business because, you know, they work hard because they put in the time they put in the effort, there’s a lot of people that succeed in business, maybe because their feet were held to the fire and they had to get something done. You know, I know that the times when my businesses are struggling the most are the times I usually get the most done because, you know, you’re not just being comfortable. Like you don’t have the luxury of being comfortable. You have to make stuff happen. So pretty wild stuff. Now, I know that you have also, in addition to build your own e-commerce businesses coached hundreds of other sellers and you know, people in all walks of life and all of that information kind of that you’ve gathered minimal articulate in this book is what I want to continue talking about for the rest of this episode. How do we take action? How do we, you know, whether we’re forced to, or not like you were forced to, or, or not, how do we take these small steps, take these small actions and turn them into something that is productive, that’s valuable, that’s successful. Right. And the first thing that I know you’d like to talk about is consistency and kind of being intentional alert, intentionality. I don’t know if that’s a word, but talk to me for a few minutes about that.
Kristin:
Consistency is really everything. You know, I tell it to my students this, a lot of times, it doesn’t matter if you have a full-time job and you’re starting something on the side, or you’re starting a new hobby or whatever, is it, that’s the time that you actually have is not relevant. It’s a, what you do with that time and how you can see how consistent you are with it. Because if you have one hour a week, like you were just saying, when you, when things are hard, we hunker down and do more and accomplish more because there’s something huge on the line. So first it’s really just figuring out what is it that you really want at the end of the day, whether it’s, you know, your e-commerce store or the entrepreneurship that you’re going through, what is it that you want to accomplish?
Kristin:
What is the big, not the huge goal, but you have this huge goal. What is it that you want? To exit your nine to five, or to just be more financially stable, or to have location freedom, figure that out. And then you can start breaking the steps down because I don’t care if you have a week, a one hour a week, or you have 50 hours a week, it’s how you consistently spend that time because you get exactly what you put it. If you put in an hour of strong, intentional work, you’re going to see those results. And the thing about stepping really small and being super intentional about that is that you get the quick win and the result right away so that you can move on to the next thing. And it really, it builds over time. I think if it’s culture, everybody wants everything, right? The second instant gratification all the time. And then the big picture is kind of lost. So the consistency really is just being intentional about that in whatever time that you decide to spend on your business, do that consistently. And don’t give up too soon.
Tim Jordan:
So, one thing that I always questioned myself about consistency and being intentional is, am I doing the right thing? Like, that’s the question? Am I doing our thing? Because if I have 10 opportunities and I’m going to be consistent, I’m going to be very focused. Laser-Focused on one of these opportunities. What if that opportunity is not the right one? What if I’m actually going down the wrong road? So what I do is I convinced myself in my mind, Hey, you can’t 100% focus on one thing. You have to have three or four irons in the fire because that’s what we are, you know, we’re overachievers and where people that are too easily distracted and doing too many things. So how do you balance consistency with flexibility as well?
Kristin:
That’s an awesome and great question. Considering I simultaneously run two businesses. It’s really hard to decide what those priorities are, but you have to have a personal filtration system with that. Is it when we’re all presented with opportunities all the time, you know, the product opportunities and opportunities to work with people, or, you know, things like that. And you have to measure that with what’s the most important thing for you is this in alignment with the most important thing that you’re doing, what is your ultimate big goal? And yes, that can actually change. But we don’t want them to keep moving the target too much. So whatever that is, making sure you’re doing the right things. Cause I don’t care how well you do something. If you’re crossing someone else’s finish line, it doesn’t matter. You have to cross your own finish line. And so you have to establish what that is for yourself.
Kristin:
And I know at least for me, it was the ability to have a stable family environment and to build, you know, finances and income from home. And then secondly, it was doing that with something I enjoy that gave me passion and fulfillment. And so because of that, let me, I don’t, I raised my children to understand that, like, I don’t care what you do for a living or how much money you make. You have to get up and do that job every single day for Lord knows how many years. So you better do something that you enjoy because life’s not worth just chasing after dollars. So marrying your passion with your income stream is to me the best possible combination, and then choosing your consistency and priorities based on that every single time, if it doesn’t align with what exactly you want in the future, then it should be a no.
Tim Jordan:
So consistency doesn’t necessarily mean you’re consistent with one project or even one revenue stream. You’re consistent with this mission, this overall mission, whether that is, you know, more money, more time. So if our mission is this kind of larger overreaching thing, then as long as we’re consistent with the small action steps in between, you think it’s better or it’s. Okay. So what about intentionality? Because for me, some of the most successful things that I’ve been able to do or come across, they weren’t by design, they were kind of accidents, right? And people ask me all the time with all the crazy stuff I do in the e-com space. Like what are you going to do next year? And I intentionally tell them, I don’t know, like, and I almost don’t want to plan because maybe I will intentionally be focusing on something that’s not as important as something else that’s going to present itself, right? So what do you think about this idea of being intentional, especially as it pertains to all of us crazy e-comm entrepreneurs that by kind of design are a little bit more freelance and fluid, so to speak.
Kristin:
I for sure, I’m with you on that. I am not a huge planner because I like to examine all my options and opportunities. But when, I mean, intentional, I’m more talking about the moving of the needle within your business. You know, as entrepreneurs I’d be like, we all have all kinds of different irons in the fire, and I’m always, I have an idea factory. So I’m always chasing all kinds of different rabbit holes, but when it comes to getting stuff done and moving that needle and reaching certain goals, the intentionality needs to be within the tasks. So as a busy mom with three kids and not a ton of time to just do whatever I want. I think that that’s with most people, whether you’re a mom, a dad, anyone like we’re all busy, right? But the reality is we only ever get 168 hours a week, no matter who you are, whether you’re over or the president or one of us, we only get 168 hours a week.
Kristin:
And how we divide that heavily depends on what those big goals are. The intentionality comes in. When if you have limited time, how are you going to spend that in order to reach the goals that you have? So if you’re just starting a side hustle and you really want to get this thing ramped up and going, and you have two hours a week to spend on that, then sitting down and being very intentional about how those two hours are going to move. The needle is extremely important. And you know, when I first started my business, I didn’t have a ton of time. I had this wild and crazy kid that was like, Dennis, the menace meets curious, George. I mean, he was just so wild that I didn’t have any longer than about 15 minutes to do anything before I was like putting out fires or chasing him down the road because he ran out of the house.
Kristin:
And so because of that, I started, it was like the 15 minute hustle. And the 15 minute hustle was really a way for me to be intentional when I had a few minutes to get something done. So, I started by just making like a master list of like all the things that needed to be done, put the money-making tasks first and be like, this one directly affects my income. And the rest of them are just like things that need to be done, but not as priority. And then when I had 15 minutes, maybe he was playing with a friend or he was napping or something like that. I could literally look at the list and be like, what’s the next thing I need to do in 15 minutes and check it off. So the intentionality is really more about what are the tasks that need to be done in what order or what priority level.
Kristin:
And then when you have a few minutes executing a task, and that doesn’t mean I got everything done in that 15 minute time span, but starting something prevents the overwhelm of having to do something that might take a week. So if you’re intentional and do 15 minutes a day on that same project, it’ll be done in a week rather than saying, oh, I have to wait until I have a full Saturday to devote to this one project. So that’s how I really stepped really small and saw constant movement in not only my income, but in my progress by just doing really small, intentional tasks.
Tim Jordan:
It is funny. You’re calling this, you know, the 15 minute hustle strategy, taking a large project and maybe breaking it up into these things. I wonder how much time I waste by convincing myself, oh, I’ve only got 15 to 20 minutes. It’s not worth getting, you know, deep in the weeds on this project, but then I’m sure if I add all those up, it’d be a lot of time. So what other actionable steps do you have for people with this 15 minute hustle strategy to take advantage of the time that they do have do you have anything actionable that I can take notes here for myself and kind of take advantage of some of this myself.
Kristin:
Well, number, you have to really decide what it is, whether it’s project-based, or it’s, you know, a big goal within your business. I like to look at smaller goals because they’re easier for me to establish, you know, when I see something big, huge, like I want to make a million dollars. That seems big and overwhelming. And I just want to go sit on the couch and watch Netflix instead of working on that. But if it’s just like, I need to make a hundred more dollars this month, that is way more doable and there’s way more action steps. So first of all, decide what it is you’re working on. I mean, I’m going to use like the silliest example here, but like cleaning out the closet that we all have, right. We all have that one closet or that one drawer or that one, something in our house, it’s just like stuff full of all the stuff that we don’t know what to do with.
Kristin:
So it’s like just put it in the hall closet. And pretty soon the hall closet is overflowing. And when you look at that, you realize it’s probably going to take all day to go through that closet and figure out what goes, where, and get rid of stuff, whatever. But if your goal is to clean out that closet and purge it and you know, maybe make it nice and clean again, then you can take a 15 minute hustle and you can say, okay, I want to clean off the top shelf today and sign a timer 15 minutes, and then let yourself off the hook after that 15 minutes. But by the end of the week, if you do that every day, that closet will be nice and clean and you’ll still have a full Saturday to do whatever you want. So whatever that goal is, whatever that little small thing, or a big thing that you want to accomplish putting it on the list, making a list of even all the different tasks that go involved in that, like okay, to clean out the closet, I’m going to need to throw away to keep, to sort to donate.
Kristin:
I’m going to need some bins. I’m going to need a garbage can and, you know, kind of go through some of this stuff and where, how I’m going to organize that. So make this small list and then 15 minutes, oh, my kids are busy doing it right now. I’m going to go clean off just the top shelf and letting yourself off the hook for that. Cause a lot of times once we get started, we’ll end up realizing we have a little bit more time than we think. And we might just like, get it done, bang it out. It might be less than we thought, but we spend too much time assuming that this is going to take too long or I don’t have enough time to execute that when we could have been done by now. So you know, just getting those things done and having really clear goals for yourself big or small knows where you’re aiming. You can’t constantly aim at a moving target or no target at all. So you have to decide what it is that you want to accomplish and then take those really small steps to get there.
Tim Jordan:
Got it. And do you think that the 15 minute strategy that like that’s as low as you can go, is it possible to do five and seven and 10 minute chunks? Because I think there is an argument we said that you have to focus, you know, and you can’t just take every five or six minutes and, you know, turn it into something specifically valuable. Or do you think that I’m over analyzing it too much or over criticizing?
Kristin:
Honestly, I think it’s whatever can work for you, whatever timeframe. I’ll tell you this, like there was one time where I got on a Facebook live to just let my know about one of its new courses. I was dropping a five minute live and that was intentional. Just like, Hey, I want to let you guys know this really awesome thing. And within five minutes, a five minute hustle you know, produce a ton of income. Cause people are like, oh, that’s really cool. I’m going to go grab that. And so you can do what you want with it. It’s just about knowing what your goal is and being intentional. I love even five minute hustles because I think people will be really surprised if they made a list of like literally all the things that need to be done and then realize how little time it takes most of the time people procrastinate and don’t even get started because it’s something they don’t like or that they don’t understand or they assume or already know it’s going to be difficult. And so it’s really not as much about the time frame that you’ve spent in. It’s more about your mindset and realizing that like I’m avoiding this, not because I don’t have time, but because I don’t understand it or it’s confusing or it’s hard. And so we don’t have, time is always our big excuse of why we won’t even start.
Tim Jordan:
That sounds very quotable. So we’re talking about these, these kind of methods and pieces of advice to make progress for people that don’t have a lot of time initially, right? They’ve got a nine to five, they’ve got kids, they’ve got, you know, whatever’s going on in their lives. That leads them to not be able to take giant chunks of time and execute. Right. But that means that whatever we’re doing is going to be broken up into smaller periods of time. And it’s going to take longer what I might be able to spend, you know, an hour doing some of that breaks into 15 minute chunks over four days could be a week or more. So do you think that because people with less time are taking longer to get the same potential functions or learning or action steps done that people get discouraged and give up too early?
Kristin:
Actually in my experience, but my students and the clients that I’ve been working with, the ones that have the least amount of time actually make the most progress because their time is so limited that they’re extremely focused and intentional. If you only have an hour to work with you better not be distracted because that’s all you’ve got. And so I have noticed that the people with less time actually accomplish more because they’re just super intentional to where one of my clients that has like a 40 hour plus week and nothing really else to do work on our business makes a lot less progress because she thinks she’s got all the time in the world of do all these things. When really she’s wasting a lot of it doing tasks that are not as important or things that aren’t even relevant at all, you know, more Facebook scrolling or more, you know, just like little things, avoiding the hard things. Cause we’re all gonna do hard things like entrepreneurship is tough sometimes and we’re going to have to learn new things. We’re going to have to fail and all that. So I actually find that the people that have the least amount of time, that if they focus and they’re doing, you know, spending that time in the best possible way, they get more success faster because they’re super intentional about what they’re doing.
Tim Jordan:
That makes a lot of sense. When you say it, but in, in kind of action, I have found myself so discouraged because things take, you know, things can take so long and then we compare ourselves to others. You know, you talk to your, your friends or your family that are in business that are able to execute some massive projects in one week where I’ve been working on the stupid thing for three months, you know? And, and then I convince myself, well, that’s not for me or I don’t have time or something like that. So it’s nice to, to hear your, kind of your observation that maybe the people that don’t have as much time are the ones that are more focused are the ones that are actually better utilizing every minute that they do have, right. Not necessarily me because I’m kind of a really bad procrastinator. But I think that’s really good, kind of a good observation for a better to have that maybe people that are forced to do it in little chunks of time can actually be.
Kristin:
And then the other, the flip side to what you’re actually saying is that like, if you’re lacking the motivation or you’re doing stuff and you feel like it’s taking so long, you can look at the end results and you can end with regret or results. That’s what you have to look at. Say six months is going to pass anyway. So in six months, do I want this or do I not want this? And am I willing to spend that time? Or let’s even say a year, I mean, a year seems like a long time, but then you just blink and realize it’s gone. If you have a year and someone could look at you and say in a year you can double your e-comm sales. And this it’s going to take you a year. If someone just told you that, but by end of it, it’d be fine.
Kristin:
And then you look at someone else, well, they did it in three months. You’re not using your own your measuring stick, you know? So time’s going to go by anyway. It’s really about what is it you want? And if you really want that, are you still gonna want that in a year? And if so, are you willing to spend a year on it? Even if someone else is doing it faster? The thing about comparison is that you don’t, no one ever knows the entire story. So you see little Instagram reels, or even if you know someone personally, you think, wow, they’re just so much farther ahead of me. They started at the same time, we all have different schedules. We all have different personalities. We all have different finances, different allotments of time that we have. So no two stories are the same.
Kristin:
So comparison, although we all tend to default doing that is it’s such a crazy concept. If you really think about, you can really only compare two things that are like identical, right? So we really have to tell ourselves time’s going to go by anyway, do I want this goal? Do I want to meet this goal? And what am I gonna accomplish this? Or don’t I, and am I willing to do what it takes however long it takes to get my result, regardless of what everybody else is doing. Because I only have my finances, my time, my knowledge, my education level. I can’t compare that to what everybody else has. I only work with what I’ve got.
Tim Jordan:
Yup. Absolutely. So what other tidbit do we have as we kind of wrap up on time that you would like to share with the audience here about maybe taking action or maybe it’s an action we’ll step to utilize the resources that we do have instead of making excuses for not having enough, anything else you’d like to share.
Kristin:
Examine your passion and your ultimate goal. I always tell it in the book I talk about this. Like in the very beginning, it’s creating that in a perfect world. Now I know there’s no such thing as a perfect world, but you know, let’s indulge for just a second. We all can do fantasy, right? Like Star Wars and Marvel and all that. Right. So we can totally get on board with this. But like, if you could dream up your perfect day, what would that look like? And what would you, what do you want to feel at the end of the day? A lot of people just talking about money and freedom and all this kind of stuff, but what is it that you want to feel? And what’s going to get you to that place. And this is about setting, you know, goal setting, whatever, but just even dreaming up, like, what is the best day and time?
Kristin:
What are you doing in your business? What are you doing throughout your day? What does that feeling at the end of the day that you want? Because if you’re saying, oh, I just want more money. Well, more money. Why? Because more money gives you more options. It gives you more choice. It gives you more freedom. It gives you more peace, security, whatever those things are. And then if that’s what you want, setting that up and setting up what is the very next step, because let’s be real. There is a huge gap between what we really want at the end of the day, this in a perfect world where we are right now and whether the gap is 10 feet or, you know, 10,000 feet, there’s still a next. There’s always a next step. So if you’ve got a huge gap between where you want to go and where you, where you are now say, okay, what is one step I can take in that direction?
Kristin:
And maybe it’s researching a new side hustle, researching a new societal. So if you hate your nine to five and you want to feel financially free or peace, or you hate your boss, okay. Getting out of that job is the big goal. In order to do that, you need to replace your income. How do I replace my income? I start looking at other options and looking at the, the very next step that you need to take in that. And once you take that step, then what’s the next small step you can take. And over time, whether it’s six months or 12 months or 90 days, you’re making consistent progress towards that one thing.
Tim Jordan:
It makes so much sense. So a lot of the guests that we have on, I always have this final question that I’d like to ask you, and you didn’t aspire initially, or you didn’t know you’re going to aspire to be an entrepreneur. You know, you were married at 19, like you said, had a kid at 20, you went through some kind of calamity on the home front, I guess you could call it at some point, you didn’t go to college, you didn’t get your MBA, but you had to learn from other really, really smart people. And I do that by reading. I suspect that you do too. So if you had to go to your bookshelf and point out the one book that has had the most impact on your ability to create a business or create stability or create income or mindset, or something that you would share with our crowd, what is that book that you pull off the shelf?
Kristin:
Oh, just one?
Tim Jordan:
Just one. It’s gotta be one.
Kristin:
Okay. No Excuses by Brian Tracy. It’s kinda in your face. It’s kinda, it’s very practical. It’s in your face. He doesn’t allow you to have excuses. Is this what you want? Or isn’t it. And if it is, what are you going to do about it? And it just, there was a couple of times I had to stop reading because there was so much action I needed to take that I couldn’t even move on. And I really just enjoy that, and he, you know, another, I can’t mention another book, nevermind, but Brian, Tracy, if you get one, there’s a couple others that he has that it’s just, it really speaks to me because it’s very practical. Very, hands-on very like, get it done or not. Do you want it? Or don’t you, and it’s not really it’s not as black and white as what I’m saying, but at the same time, it’s really not as complicated as we want it to be. Do you want this? Yes or no. If you do, what do you need to do about it?
Tim Jordan:
So I feel like you do have another second book that you need to tell us about. So go ahead. And you just, I could feel the excitement there, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to throttle that back.
Kristin:
But what other book I was going to mention with the Brian Tracy is Eat That Frog. So he’s talking about how we procrastinate, how we put it off, as far as like not doing the things we really need to do because of fear and because of procrastination or the unknown or all these things, it’s like just eat the frog and see what happens. All of the fear, a lot of the stuff that we have and the stuff we’re doing are based on assumptions and based on, you know, things that we’re imagining to where it’s like, if you actually do it, then you have something to measure it with and decide, is this for me? Or is this not? But how can, you know, if you don’t fully do what you need to do.
Tim Jordan:
Yep. Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on. If people wanted to, you know, find out more about you or gets more information about what you have going on, where would they go to look for that?
Kristin:
So I host the Amazon Files Podcast and then everything else is under mommy income. I’m just a mom making income. So you don’t have to be a mom, but mommyincome.com is all of my dotcoms. And that’s all of my social handles as well. So YouTube and Facebook, Instagram everywhere is mommy income.
Tim Jordan:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on and for all of you that are listening. Thanks for listening again. We love all of you listeners. We also love feedback. We love reviews. We love requests, if any of you have any great requests for any type of content that you’d like to hear us talk about, you can find us on all the social media channels and this message us to our Instagram account, or leave a post in the FBA high rollers Facebook group online, or send a message to the AMPM Podcast, Facebook page as well. We keep an eye on those messages. You can contact us there. Thanks again so much Kristin for being on. Thank you all for listening. We’ll see you guys on the next episode.
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