Is There More To Ecommerce Than Selling Products? – 274
In episode 274 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Brandy discuss:
- 03:00 – From The Real Estate Business To The E-commerce Industry
- 06:00 – How Brandy Got Started In The E-commerce Business?
- 10:30 – Seeing A Demand In The Industry Opened An Opportunity
- 13:15 – It’s About People And Connections That Make Or Break A Business
- 15:30 – Always Play On Your Strengths
- 19:00 – Salt Lake City Is A Good Place To Import Products?
- 23:00 – Tips When Handling Multiple Businesses
- 28:00 – The Advantages Of An E-commerce Business
- 30:30 – How To Analyze Opportunities That Come Your Way
- 34:00 – Get The Right People For Your Business
- 35:50 – How To Get In Touch With Brandy
Transcript
Tim Jordan:
One of the coolest parts about this crazy e-commerce industry is the crazy e-commerce community. There are so many really smart folks that come from so many different backgrounds that never thought they would be doing these businesses and these brands and these services, but they are. There’s also just a really strong inclination to look at other things. We’re all looking at other ways to make passive income, whether it be the NFT, crypto thing going on right now, or real estate, or actually creating services that support the eCommerce industry. Today’s guest is one of those people that’s been involved in a lot of it and keeps getting involved in more. And we’re going to talk about that journey of finding new opportunities. It’s gonna be a great episode to listen till the end. Here we go. 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.
Bradley Sutton:
What happens when you’ve grown your Amazon business, as much as you can and don’t have the time or resources to take it to the next level, that’s where Thrasio comes. Thrasio acquire category leading FBA brands from small business owners, just like you, and specializes in taking your brand to new heights while you profit from the growth. When you sell your business at Thrasio, your deal could include a long term, earn out meaning you profit when your brand grows under their management. So if you’re thinking about selling your FBA business, this thrasio.com/helium 10 to connect with Thrasio’s deals team that’s thrasio.com/helium 10. For more information on if your brand is a good fit for Thrasio.
Tim Jordan:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the AMPM podcast. I’m your host, Tim Jordan. And I’m coming to you live well, not live cause it’s recorded, but recording live in Salt Lake City, Utah. So not the typical studio here. And I’m here with my good friend, Brandy Hoffman say hi, Brandy.
Brandy:
Hi.
Tim Jordan:
Hi. So I flew in yesterday. It is really snowing, really cold, which is a big difference from Southern California. I was at the Helium 10 offices right before I came here. So it was a nice transition to get to see the beauty here. I’ve never been to this city but most-
Brandy:
You brought the snow.
Tim Jordan:
It’s like I brought the snow. Maybe so, it could be definitely didn’t bring it from California.
Brandy:
No, we were digging our cars out yesterday and I’m like, Tim’s gonna be here and trying to, there was like three feet of snow against our car, trying to dig out just to see you. So you should feel special. I
Tim Jordan:
I feel very, very special. So I met Brandy several months ago, I guess. The first half of this year at an e-commerce conference in Chicago, we were all on a riverboat cruise on the Chicago river and she walked up to me and started talking my ear off. No, I’m just kidding. But she was really talking my ear off. And I thought her story was very interesting in what her business and what her associates were trying to accomplish was exceptionally interesting. But you not too long ago, did not think you would be of an e-commerce conference, did you?
Brandy:
I did not. No.
Tim Jordan:
So, Brandy is part of a real estate conglomerate. Is that a good word? So tell us briefly kind of what the real estate business is. And I think that it’s gonna be interesting cuz a lot of our listeners and a lot of e-commerce sellers are always thinking about real estate, whether it’s Airbnb stuff or whether it’s flipping houses or getting long term rentals. So talk about the real estate business and then we’ll get into the transfer into e-commerce
Brandy:
Definitely. So it’s interesting cuz real estate is a lot. I think when I first thought got into real estate, I thought it was mostly, you’ve got your realtors, you’ve got your flippers and maybe, you know, people that do big developments, apartment buildings, and stuff and finding that there’s a lot more to it than just, you know, those few basic things with our business. We buy houses, we do flip houses, we keep some for rentals for Airbnb. And then we also buy houses if we don’t have the bandwidth to flip anymore houses or things like that, then we’ll sell the house or the contract to who somebody who is looking to flip the house or looking for a rental or things like that. And so we’ve been doing that for about six years and because of that, we get to work with a lot of people in the community, other people who do whole selling or who flip houses, you just end up having a lot of the same context, real estate does the same thing.
Brandy:
There’s real estate conferences, just like there is e-commerce conferences, and everybody kind of gets to know each other and work together. And although you might be in competition, you know, you’re also like sharing ideas and there’s masterminds with real estate and things like that. So you know, what it really did is it taps you into a network of other business professionals that are trying to make money and learn of ways to invest and other things that we can do. So you know, real, estate’s a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot about, you know, housing markets and how you really can gauge you know, what properties are worth and what is makes sense to invest in and stuff like that. I mean, oftentimes people think of having a rental, but right now we’re seeing that really having an Airbnb makes the most sense. You’re making more money off of having an Airbnb or something like that. So there’s other platforms other than Airbnb that you can use as well. But you know, so we’ve been pivoting a lot to that rather than just having traditional landlord rentals and things like that. And so-
Tim Jordan:
So being involved in this community of people trying to make a buck, trying to find passive income, this crazy term called e-commerce came up, right. So, talk briefly about your kind of introduction in your first I know, realization of what e-commerce was and how to make money doing that.
Brandy:
Right. So one of the guys that we work with here had been interested in getting involved in e-commerce and there are a few other people in the real estate space who had been dabbling with either getting their own stores or products of some sort, whether it be on Walmart or Amazon. And so we kind of started doing some research and dipping our toes into what that would look like and how you know, cuz passive income is really the, where everybody wants to be. If I cannot go to work and still be making money or maybe only work like a few hours a day, I mean, that’s everybody dream, I think. And so and that’s what the nice thing about real estate is you can buy a rental you know, flipping, I wouldn’t say is passive, it’s a lot of work.
Brandy:
I think it’s you watch those shows and it seems like, oh, I would love to do that. It’s so –
Tim Jordan:
But Joan Gaines is full of crap.
Brandy:
Yeah. It is not that fun. I mean, there’s a lot of problems that go wrong with it, a lot of babysitting and stuff, but just simple, you know, acquiring real estate for investment purposes, for tax purposes and write ups and things it’s pretty passive. And so we’ve always been interested in finding more things like that, where we can invest money and still you know, not have to put in a ton of time into the venture. So you know, we had been introduced to e-commerce is maybe an opportunity to you know, invest some more money. There’s a lot of people in real estate who have, you know, it’s the end of the year right now we have a lot of people scrambling to find more rental properties to purchase for tax purposes. And we’re like, well, what if we can find a better way to use this money that people are ready to invest and wanna do something with. And so we kind of started looking into the e-commerce space and for us, my thought was just, we’ll just jump into going to some of these conferences and seeing what we can learn and find out. And that’s kind of where, you know, after we had talked to a few people who were doing the same thing and selling online it seemed to be something that I felt that we could do and would make sense for the people that we work with.
Tim Jordan:
So you got to experience, well, maybe not experience, but meander into all of the different types of e-commerce, you know, especially on marketplace like Amazon. So the reselling, the dropshipping, the wholesale side, and then you really landed on private label as your objective, right? Like, this is the holy grail. If we can find product opportunities, we can launch ’em, we can build ’em up, we can get some cash and we can eventually sell these businesses
Brandy:
Well, and you know, exactly there’s the there’s arbitrage and dropshipping. And really, if you’re looking at it from, you know, taking a step back, it’s okay, I’m gonna get the best ROI if I’m doing a private label business. And it just seems to make the most sense. Now it does seem to be a little bit more work, but again, I don’t think I’ve ever really been scared off by that as where other people are. I think when starting a new business, most people are like, oh my gosh, I have to, you know, set up tracking services and set up all these accounts and I have to get a new bank account and a new LLC, and who’s gonna do the taxes. And I mean, it’s everything. How am I gonna manufacture a product? Where am I gonna get? And I think just the thought of that is overwhelming to most people. And so they back away from it. But after talking to some people who you know, we’re selling online and selling successfully, I was like, you know, we can do this. Like, this is something with the right planning that is possible. And we could probably help other people do this as well. Yeah.
Tim Jordan:
So the whole idea of private label is we were talking just off camera, like it’s complex, but it’s not com it’s a lot of moving pieces, but none of them are particularly hard. You just have to put ’em together. So you have to have systems, you have to have processes. And I have never seen anybody dive into it as deeply as your team did. Like, you’ve now got multiple VAs that do product research and then they pass it up the chain for validation. And then it goes through the whole sourcing process and the development process. And it’s, it’s pretty cool, but I don’t really wanna talk about private label. I wanna talk about the thing that came after that, right. Which is Easy Cheetah, which is a prep fulfillment and warehousing business. And the reason I wanna talk a little bit about that is because obviously you found an opportunity, you said, Hey, here’s something else that needs to be addressed in the market as if we don’t have enough going on already like we want to dive into this.
Tim Jordan:
And I think it’s an interesting conversation to have, because I see this all the time, like e-commerce entrepreneurs that are diving into this space that realize, Hey, there’s other stuff to be done than just building a product and selling that product. Right? You look at all the software companies, all the way, logistics companies, the insurance companies, the accounting services that are specifically geared towards eCommerce. You look at the consultants, the PPC managements. I know a lot of people that were miserable private label sellers, but they were really good at branding like one piece or they could not source a product to save their lives, but they could run the crap ads on PPC. Right. And I think that maybe our ego or our pride gets in the way of taking advantage of maybe some of our strengths, these opportunities, cuz we think, Hey, I got into e-commerce to build a branded, sell up and I can’t give up on that. I can’t get distracted. But some of the most successful people that I know in the e-commerce space were not necessarily successful because they built a product and sold it. They were successful because they found their niche or they found this other business or they were able to support other sellers with their specialized skills. Right. So Easy Cheetah came to be because either you felt you were good at this or you saw a demand in this space?
Brandy:
So we saw a demand in this space. We kept hearing about, you know, everybody’s problems with 3PL services, everybody’s backed up.
Tim Jordan:
The Warehouses are full nobody’s taking shipments.
Brandy:
Exactly. And So I immediately, after asking a few people like, Hey, do you think that this is doable? Is this something, or is this way, are we gonna get way in over our head? If we try to open up our own 3PL service and, and the feedback we got was, oh, I think you can do it. And I think part of that is because, you know, we have set up some businesses before, but you know, it’s more putting those processes in place where you could really set up any business. I think, you know if you have the right processes set up.
Tim Jordan:
So you’ve already got teams, you’ve already got systems. You’ve already got all of this stuff in place where it seems like that made it a little bit easier to like tack on another business. Do you think that that made it easier or do you think you would’ve been less likely to try to open up a business like this? If you just had to start from ground zero and you didn’t have all of this infrastructure in place already, do you think that made a difference?
Brandy:
One of the people I work with Dane talked to me about this and really it’s really about who you have and the connections and the people that make or break a business. I believe there’s a book I think it’s called Who Not How, and we’re total supporters of it. So you know, I’m haven’t ever been afraid to jump out and ask questions, talk to people who are doing what we’re trying to do. So, I mean, I think that it helps that we have a general understanding of how Amazon works and the shipping processes works for not just Amazon, but any marketplace. And you know, we made sure to hire, for example, warehouse manager that has experience and has been in it in the past. But you know, if you are able to align the right people in the right positions, then doing, starting any new venture, isn’t that hard, you know, because you have enough faith that they’ll be able to carry out the things that so that need to happen.
Brandy:
So, you know, I, I give the warehouse manager everything that they needed to set up, you know, getting all of the products and the supplies and equipment, and accounts that we’re going to need. And then we make sure that we have, you know, an operations team that’s able to set up all the accounts and the services that we’re the service providers we’re going to have to work with. And you know, as long as you have the right people that are and, and then we’re getting into consulting and making sure that we’re not missing anything and that if we are, you know, okay, how do we tackle that? And so I think it’s decreasing the responsibility into, you know, breaking that up–
Tim Jordan:
Into bite size chunks,
Brandy:
Into bite size chunks, amongst people that are comfortable with tackling that kind of stuff. Like if you give a visionary, a job of opening, a bunch of accounts, you know, the Dane who we work with, he’s, he’s the visionary of the company. He’s the one out, you know, making huge connections and seeing what our next project is. I’m, I’ve definitely always been more of an integrator personality where I, can you give me, Hey, I wanna do this. I’ll sit down and be able to say, Hey, this is how we’re gonna get it done and put those processes in place, you know? And so I think it’s just making sure that you’re playing to your strengths. If you’re a visionary type of personality, then you need to make sure that you get an integrator in, on your business to get things going, because what ends up happening is you just, aren’t getting those essential kind of tasks completed that have to get done. You know.
Tim Jordan:
So you’re looking at, you know, your processes and your team to build these physical products businesses, you see an opportunity to create a service, which actually is gonna help you in the long run because you’re able to support your own businesses. But was there a time when you thought we’re crazy for trying to take on too much? Or was it like, Hey, this just feels good. It’s a good fit. Let’s jump in.
Brandy:
I think it’s a little bit of both. Like, I have experienced being stressed about this, you know, we still have our real estate business going. We are, you know, still researching product and doing that, getting stores going on, Amazon, and brands build on Amazon. And then we also have the wear housing. So there’s times where it feels like, oh my gosh, should we bite off more than we can chew? But we always fall back on the fact that yeah, if I have these processes in place, everything’s gonna be fine. It’s going to work out, you know? So, but you know what’s interesting is along the way, and I think being open to doing different things, I feel like in this last five years, I’m not only am, I, I wouldn’t say an expert, but close to a real estate expert, I have experience I’ll have experience with you know, with warehousing and shipping. I feel like pretty confident in product research capabilities. I mean, you learn so much that will end up helping you in the end with any business that I do, that I of feel it’s important to branch out. You know what I mean, rather than just be stuck.
Tim Jordan:
So you’re saying that it’s not just a liability, like getting into this other business. Isn’t like, oh, I’m just splitting more of my time. I’m opening myself up to more risk, but it’s like, oh, I’m also getting an education. So by jumping in, it’s the stuff that I learned is going to continue helping the other businesses. Right?
Brandy:
A hundred percent. And it’s interesting because as you start talking to attorneys or, or CPAs about how you can integrate all of these businesses and how things work it’s you realize the benefit also financially and kind of branching out and you know, what that can do for your business in term, like now, when we were looking for warehouse space here, or if we ever wanted to purchase an additional space, we have a leg up because of our connections in the real, I mean, the way that we were able to get the space that we have now is just from the connections from our real estate business, you know? And so that made which anybody can go do, but it made that process much easier and run more smoothly. And so it’s ended up helping that. They support each other.
Tim Jordan:
So let’s talk about location. All right. Because you’re based here in salt lake city. So where everything is at, you knew that the world needed more 3PL warehousing prep, fulfillment space. But you’re not on the coast. And I have an answer to this. I, I know how I feel about it. Cuz I owned a similar company before I sold it. And I was in North Alabama, like the weirdest place in the world to bring containers in. But we were doing it. Talk a little bit about the excitement that you continue to build as you, researched, maybe how a nontraditional import location is actually more valuable. Right. And just to set the context, everybody that’s in eCommerce knows that the logistics over the past 18 months has been a dumpster fire. Right? When I was in orange county, Southern California earlier this week, there’s still a hundred ships parked outside long beach port that can’t get in and unload because everything’s still backed up. So why did you think that Salt Lake City would be okay to import products for e-commerce sellers?
Brandy:
That’s a good question. So it’s interesting cuz Sam, I wouldn’t have ever thought about salt lake city. I don’t think a lot of people think of it as kind of a hub for much of anything except for as it’s Mormons, you know? So but it’s Salt Lake’s actually been planning an inland port for quite some time. Now I think it’s been since 2016 because of we not only do we have a large international airport, we have a Union Pacific hub here. We also have two major highways. We have I-15, which runs north and south. So from Canada and Mexico, and then we have I-80, which runs from coast to coast. And so we’re in our positioning as far as transportation is concerned is excellent. So–
Tim Jordan:
So for trucking rail and air you’re set up correct. And even like ships coming into Oakland, you’re only a one day drive away from the port of Oakland at San Francisco area. Even if they have to put a container on the ship. So coming inland is good, but for distribution, you’re like the perfect spot. You can get over the mountains. Easy. You can go north, south, you cover all the west coast. Right?
Brandy:
Right. Well, and I mean with how backed up the ports are, even if you were to have your stuff come in if you wanted it processed at, at Oakland or San Diego, by the time that the goods got to salt lake city and got processed, it would still be faster than the way that timing is right now on the ports. You know, they’ve got what hundreds of containers just pyramided up on these, you know, processing ports. So it’s still faster right now to have something shipped to an inland port than it is to have and process to an inland port than it is to have a process at a–
Tim Jordan:
So for people that are thinking, Hey, like I might not be set up for this. You know? And the example I see is people that have a great idea of a service that needs to be fulfilled, but they know nothing about software. Like when there’s an opportunity, there are opportunities, right? When there’s opportunities, you’ll find a way around those. So if I were gonna create a software company, I don’t know, I mean, I can barely write an email then, you know, there are huge networks of people that I could collaborate with or partner with or hire that could handle that. When you think that, oh, why would I choose to build a fulfillment center and service inland, you know, explore a 12 hour drive from the port? Why would I do this? You start researching and find out, well, you’re actually like in prime positioning.
Tim Jordan:
And even the city has been investing in infant structure to make that more possible. So if I look back at my friends in the industry or successful businesses in the industry, they could have easily told themselves a lot of reasons why something wouldn’t work, but when you actually dive into it, you find out, Hey, these opportunities are usually pretty easy to overcome. Like there’s a lot more opportunity than we thought. So now going forward, you’ve got e-commerce brands, you’ve got real estate business, you’ve got a prep warehouse, fulfillment distribution center. How do you prioritize your day or balance your day to prioritize which one is most important?
Brandy:
So again, I heavily rely on the people that we have in each business to make sure that everything that has to get done is getting done. I mean, prioritizing is big. If you don’t have somebody on your team that can prioritize which tasks need to be completed for each business first I think you’ll be in trouble. But the biggest thing is like also, it was really hard for me. And I think this happens with a lot of business, owners is to delegate things. I, for the longest time we hired this person who is amazing and he’s, I call him my Mandy. He’s like the clone of me, but in a male version and I’ve been so happy.
Tim Jordan:
Oh, I get it. Yeah. So Mandy is the male Brandy?
Brandy:
Male, Brandy. Yeah.
Tim Jordan:
And even though Mandy’s a female name. It doesn’t quite work, but I’m following. Keep going.
Brandy:
It’s the best I could come up with. OK. So he’s just like the top notch, the best hire I could think I ever could have made. He was sent from God. And so even then knowing his capabilities and everything, I found myself like, oh, why don’t I wanna give this up? And you know, Dan talked to me a few times about like, Brandy, this is competing the flow of our business. You have got to let some stuff go like you have to. And it’s been such a good lesson for me to learn, cuz not only have I been able to free up my time I was to grow the business, which I was, you know, there was so much stuff that I was so stressed about. Like what if it doesn’t get right? Or what if this gets done wrong that I really was stopping us from growing and, and being better as a business.
Brandy:
And so you know, we’ve really utilized the hiring of virtual assistants. I know Tim’s talked about this before, but I’m such a proponent. I think the same thing I was really nervous about. And we’ve also used it in real estate, you know, because you’re nervous about, oh, well, what if they aren’t able to speak English enough or it doesn’t go where, or we lose out on money because we haven’t trained to be out a VA. Well, and what I’m finding is that you can find a VA to do just about anything and there’s obviously some stuff that you wanna keep in house. For me, it’s super important. We don’t work remotely. We have our core team that gets together every single day. And it is so important that we have that face to face stuff, especially when running three different businesses, we just have to have people available.
Brandy:
And the brainstorming that occurs that you just can’t like duplicate it, you know, when you’re in and you know, salt lake, I don’t think has also experienced a lot of the, I mean, obviously we’ve had, COVID the same as everywhere else and things like that. But you know, the culture here and the legislature here has been really big about keeping things, moving in spite of COVID and what we can do to keep to do that safely and giving, you know, a lot of autonomy to businesses to be able to make decisions on how they’re gonna handle that themselves and things like that. And so we didn’t really see the same kind of slowdown that you would see on the news. You know, on the east coast or the west coast of, you know, businesses shutting down and a bunch of people losing their job.
Brandy:
I mean, I just feel like it seemed like Salt Lake and I don’t have updated to back this up. Obviously, just my experience from living here is, you know, we, things have really been operating as normal for quite some time here, you know? And so we haven’t experienced, I haven’t seen a ton of labor shortages. We don’t, you know, even now, so I feel pretty lucky that we’ve been able to do all this living in Salt Lake because it’s just a great place to operate a business out of, you know? And so we’ve really haven’t had to deal, you know, with what I think a lot of other people have had to deal with when it comes to that. Now we still have to experience the same things with manufacturing and that the whole rest of the world has to deal with, but we’re hoping to be able to help relieve some of that pressure on the e-com business by starting our own shipping company, you know? And so yeah, we’re excited about that.
Tim Jordan:
So let’s talk about e-commerce in general. Like you have been crushing it in real estate. You’ve done very well with flips with like wholesaling properties with the Airbnb and rental investments. Why is e-commerce so exciting to you that you want to point a lot of your resources and time and effort into that as opposed to just continuing to scale up?
Brandy:
So, first of all, we, one of the biggest culture item in our company is, is like trying to help people. And I know that seems odd because as like a capitalistic running business, you don’t sometimes I think that it’s easy to lose sight of that, but you know, our mission has always been, we try to do that with our employees. Like what can we do to better your life? A lot of our team meetings are based around what do you want to do? Like where do you, what goals are you trying to accomplish? Like, so starting from there into the business relationships that we have are very much centered around, like, what can we do to help somebody out here or bring them a board? And so the same thing goes with our clients. It’s very important that we wanted to find or start something that was beneficial and useful to people that would make their lives better.
Brandy:
Like everybody here think it’s really easy to meet anybody in any industry, but it still even happens in e-commerce where you have people selling you something that is not sustainable, not what it is meant to be or chalked up to be. And so it’s been super important that we find an opportunity that is actually going to be beneficial and helpful for our clients. And what’s so exciting about e-com is, A, the return on your investment that you put into it like that, first of all, let’s get the money outta the way you can do really well if you set up and manage a brand. But also that I think it’s that anybody can do it. It’s not something that that is, you know, just for people who have had experience with selling online in the past, or just for existing business owners, I think we’ve been able to you know, we can pull anybody here. That’s interested in getting into e-com into it and helping them as well. So I think a big, the thing like you talked about is really networking and trying to find some services here that being willing to outsource where you can. I think that anybody that tries to take this all in and one by that I’m gonna do the PPC and I’m going to manage all the customer service emails, and I’m going to out to source all the products and contact manufacturers. I mean, I just, you gotta scrap that. I think the biggest thing is just outsourcing where we can, where we can find agencies that can do things better than we can. And then, you know, if there’s something for us like that we thought we could do a good job at, then we’re gonna try to take that on ourselves.
Tim Jordan:
So your opinion is just keep looking. Like just keep expanding, take it on, try to drink from a fire. And if it sucks, it sucks. But if you don’t at least look for the next new thing, you might miss a big opportunity. And I think I agree with that. I definitely spread myself too thin sometimes. But there are so many people that I know that are succeeding because they tried the next thing. Like they didn’t stick with something that they were going to continue to struggle with, or they jumped to the next big opportunity. I’m not saying big opportunity being the next, get rich quick scheme, but I’m saying Hey if you’re really good at PPC, figure out how to do PPC for other people, if you are exceptionally good at understanding. You know, I’ve used the example of RE and Chelsea Cohen before like they are still sellers, but the majority of the time they’re spending on building SoStocked, which is a great software tool that everybody’s raving about and loves.
Tim Jordan:
And if they hadn’t taken a chance to like continue to try the next thing or expand their portfolio of opportunities like that never would’ve happened. And I think that’s gonna be you know, bigger investment or a bigger turnover on their investment or a bigger payout on their investment than maybe staying in the trenches with physical products. I don’t know. So I think it’s good advice. So if there’s anybody listening to this podcast and they’re thinking, Hey, I am doing this, but I think there’s another opportunity here. What would be your advice them on how to analyze those opportunities to determine, Hey, should I take a risk and keep moving on to the next thing?
Brandy:
Yeah. So ask people, I mean, I think that people’s biggest downfall is being afraid to talk to someone in the industry or start getting on Facebook groups and asking questions. You’d be surprised how much information there is out there on YouTube and Facebook groups get to understand what you’re doing more. I mean, I think we’ve watched countless hours before we started the warehouse service on about shipping and 3PL and just trying to get as knowledgeable about the process as possible. You know, and I think that my first inclination is that people aren’t going to wanna talk to me about what they’re doing. If I’m looking at building a business that is in competition to them, and that’s absolutely not been the case for us. I think most people love to talk about their industry. They love to talk about what they do.
Brandy:
They’re actually a lot more open to sharing advice and kind of helping out than you would think. And it’s pretty refreshing. And so ask some questions. And after you’ve done your research and asked some questions, if you still think it’s something you wanna do get the right people, and you know, it might cut into your profit margins at first to hire. And I think people oftentimes are like, oh, I don’t know if I can hire somebody right now. I don’t know if I have like the funds to make it work. I would say as soon as possible if you can make it work, even if you’re making like almost nothing in the beginning, you need to get good talent. Final thing also is if you hire somebody on and they’re not working out, do not be afraid to cut that relationship and move on because the last thing you need is to be pull somebody along when you’re trying to start a business that you don’t think is really gonna work out in the end.
Brandy:
And then you’re investing all this time, all this money into getting somebody going. When, you know, in the back of your mind, this isn’t gonna work. We’ve made that mistake before where it’s not, there’s anything wrong with the person. We could just tell this isn’t gonna be a good fit. We could tell that maybe we are gonna need somebody with some different capabilities and we waited way too long to cut the court just because you feel bad, but this is business. You are trying to do something different for yourself. You’re trying to build a successful business here and who you have and what you have them doing is important. If you’re, if that’s, you know, you’re gonna make a successful.
Tim Jordan:
Be slow to hire and fast to fire which is not something I’m particularly good at.
Brandy:
And you can be nice.
Tim Jordan:
You can be nice about it, but be nice about it still. All right. Well, that’s cool. That’s, that’s a lot of good information. I think that it’s valuable to kind of pick your brain on these thoughts because I know a lot of you listening struggle with this struggle with trying to think of what’s the new thing. What’s the next thing? What should we focusing on? Are we stuck too deep in the trenches? Not thinking about something else. If we have a good idea, should we expand to it? Should we try to experiment with it? Or do we do this in conjunction with an existing business, or do we stop old business to go to this? Like, it’s a lot of stuff to think about, but I’ve said it before writing this episode, but I’ll keep saying, and some of the most successful people that I know have taken on more challenges and more opportunities and have found more success by juggling a couple of different things, especially if they’re related and they just keep feeding on themselves.
Tim Jordan:
You know, it takes a lot of time for me do this podcast, but it’s also an investment because I learn from having these conversations, right. Every business that I’ve started has been a struggle, but it always supports existing businesses or existing business will support it. So it’s like this crazy flywheel that keeps ramping up. So, Brandy, I appreciate you. I know you’re very busy. I appreciate you taking some time to talk about this stuff. And I guess if anybody wanted more information about what you’ve got going on in the logistics space, go to easycheetah.com, E A S Y C H E E T A H. Did I do that right? easycheetah.com located in primary location located in Salt Lake City, which as you said, is actually an interesting place that a lot of people are not thinking about. So thank you all for being on the episode again, I’ll ask you as I always do or typically do, if you found any value in this, make you leave us review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to. If you’re watching this on YouTube again, forgive us for not having the big fancy studio as I am in the field, so to speak in Salt Lake City, but give us a thumbs up on that YouTube. But if you would make sure to subscribe to our channel, we’ll see all of you on the next episode.
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