#330 – Freedom, Travel, And Experiences: Life Outside The Amazon Grind with Mike Jackness

#330 - Freedom, Travel, And Experiences: Life Outside The Amazon Grind with Mike Jackness Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 330 of the AM-PM Podcast. My guest this week is Michael Jackness. Michael's been doing this entrepreneur, this e-commerce game for quite some time. He's had some really good success on Amazon as well as in some other businesses. We talk shop in this episode as well as just enjoying life as an entrepreneur. Enjoy this episode. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. We explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Mike Jackness, welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, man. I'm so stoked to have you here. Speaker 2: It's exciting to, I think, to be back. I think I did this eons ago. I haven't ever done a podcast with you and I'm excited about the conversation because you've always been fun and interesting to talk to. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. And you know, your podcast actually, while we're on the subject, Ecom Crew, if you want to look that up, everybody, I think is one of the better podcasts out there. You know, I actually listen to, there's only a handful of podcasts in this space that I actually listen to because most of them are just junk or just a bunch of gibberish. But yours actually, you get into, there's no BS, you get into the meat of things, and you take people on a journey that they don't normally get to see. It's really good. And then you talk about the current stuff. So those of you listening, make sure you check out, if you're not familiar with EcomCrew, make sure you check out Michael's podcast there. He does it with his partner, Dave, right? Dave, yep. And you do a really, really good job on that. It's one of the few that I actually listen to. Speaker 2: I appreciate that, man. It's been an interesting journey. We're getting very close to episode 500 as of recording this and I think, you know, just in terms of lessons and things to think about for people out there, it's another one of those great examples of if you just stick with something for a long period of time, even though week to week or day to day, it feels like you're Not accomplishing a whole lot. It's another example of just adding things onto each other, small bits at a time, steady pressure over a long period of time makes a big difference. And you know, we're at millions of downloads now. And that podcast over and above meeting people like you and having amazing interviews is just opens up so many doors and things that have happened in my life that never would have happened otherwise. And it both has been rewarding financially and personally and everything in between. And it's only because we started You procrastinate starting a lot of things in life and in entrepreneurship and stuck with it when only my mom was listening. It's a good lesson. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's always, we have a, I have a personal chef that comes and cooks for us a couple of times a week and prepares meals for like the week. And the other day he, I didn't, I had no idea, but he's like, Hey, that was a great podcast you had the other day on the AI. I was like, what are you doing? Listen, you don't sell on Amazon. He's like, no, I want to check it out and see, see what you're doing. So you never know who's out there listening and who it's going to meet. Is that why you start, I mean, you started the podcast, what, 2015, 2016, somewhere around in there? Speaker 2: 2016, we've been one episode a week come hell or high water that whole time. And we were doing two per week for one year. I was like, let me just see what happens if we do two per week. And really kind of discovered we were kind of having some cannibalization in terms of listenership. And it just, it was, it didn't double, it was like double the amount of effort, but definitely was not double the amount of reward. And I think when you're trying to get that many guests on and do that many episodes, the quality was kind of degrading. And so we've gone back to one per week and really have found a good cadence there. Speaker 1: And you've been pretty transparent on the podcast, too. You know, a lot of people in this e-commerce space, especially in the Amazon space, they keep their cards, no pun intended since you're a poker player, close to their chest. And they don't want to share what their brands are. They don't want to share what they're doing. Someone says, what do you sell? I'm in the pet space. Well, what's that mean? Don't worry, I'm in the pet space. But you've actually shared, you know, Color It, and you took us behind the scenes of the whole process. You ended up selling that to Matt Howitt. You know, and Matt's been on the podcast, he comes to every one of my Billion Dollar Seller Summits, he's a really good guy. You ended up selling that to him and you documented that and I think you even did Quiet Light, orchestrated that and they actually, you guys both went on their podcast and did some stuff. That was really, really cool. Why, I think I know the answer to this, but just for the audience, why would you share what you're doing out there? Speaker 2: Yeah, I get asked this actually a lot. It's funny this comes up all the time. I would say it's a couple different things. First of all, this was not my first business venture. You mentioned poker. I was in the online poker affiliate marketing industry before this and did well financially and kind of came into this Into this space in a much better financial position than I was when I got into my first gig in entrepreneurship. And so I was a little bit less worried about some of the repercussions of sharing more. That was one thing. Number two, I've developed a sense of understanding There's more pros and sharing than the cons, right? I mean, certainly there's a lot of repercussions of being an open book and we'll talk a little bit about some of that if you want. But I think the pros are, you know, in the helping other people and being selfless and just having no agenda while doing it has just really been, has been really rewarding. Again, it's opened up doors like these conversations right now. The other thing that I've thought is First of all, I'm never going like you let's use color it as an example I'm never going to sell all of the world's coloring books all the world's gel pens all the world's colored pencils Whatever it might be there are already or there already were countless of people on Amazon selling this stuff Everyone has helium 10 or jungle scout or whatever other tool they want to use and they can find this stuff, right? and so my feeling is I I'm starting it first. I should be the market leader and the pressure of other competition should hopefully motivate me to stay in the number one position. And if I allow someone else to catch us and do a better job from the rearview mirror, then I only have myself to blame. And I think it kind of continually motivates me to keep pushing the envelope and trying to do a better job and not being complacent, which is easy to do when you're in your own little bubble and unaware of other things going on around you. Speaker 1: But by sharing, I know like, you know, with Helium 10 with Bradley and the Serious Sellers Podcast, they did the Project X with the coffin shelves. And that's an example that they use. They were one of the first to come out with it. And now there's, I don't know how many thousands more people that have, you know, come out with it. Or if you're watching a webinar somewhere and they shared, you know, these are the 10 hot products to do. Everybody's doing those products. And then you have the people, the haters out there that will mess with you. You know, they know the brand, they'll come in and they'll screw with you. But I always believe that if you can't share what you're doing on selling on Amazon, then you're not doing it right. You need to be building a brand. You need a moat around it. And if you're not proud of what you're doing and you're not differentiated enough, Then you're doing something wrong. So that, you know, that's, that's why I believe people should be the people that don't want to share are usually the people that are up to no good, uh, in my opinion. And that may not always be the case. Uh, but that, that's, that, that's my opinion. They're not doing something as well as they should be. Speaker 2: Yup. I mean, I think that there might be some crazy outlier where it isn't the case, but I think it almost always is the case. Right. And I don't know, like you look at an example, like color it, You know, we had all this intellectual property. We had a very unique manufacturing process that took us a couple of years to develop. And, you know, a whole bunch of other factors where we have built a really big email list and the community and other things. And most people don't want to put in the hard work, right? They just want to like go put up some half-assed product on Amazon to kind of compete against you. That's not going to be as good. It's not going to have as good of a following. And again, I mean, it really, I think, puts the pressure on us to make sure that we are continuing to build that moat that you just mentioned. And all these years later, I mean, I still keep in touch with Matt. It's still a great business, right? And they've taken the baton and I think done very well with it and made me proud. And so, You know, I think if you're developing products and brands in that vein, you have a lot less to worry about than some of the other things that we saw right now that I am very worried about where I feel like it's just kind of a commodity product and There's lots of people coming after us and there's not a lot of defensibility. And of course, those are the brands that people aren't as interested in buying or whatever. It still makes us money, but not as defensible. Definitely keeps me up way more at night. And if you're out there listening, I would be trying to do the other factor where you have more of a defensible brand, more of a community, more of a differentiator, more things that are unique than just trying to launch a product. Speaker 1: Why did you decide to sell color it I mean you it was your example that you're given it was doing well It was on the upswing what made and I know you have a couple other brands and you're in the process I think of selling one of them right now, but what made you decide? Hey, I'm gonna spend this thing off. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I kind of regret it in retrospect. We were growing quite a bit. We had gone from zero to like a million, then like one to two. We were basically doubling every year, two to four, four to eight. We were on track to do over $10 million a year that we sold Colorado. And the stressful thing about e-commerce businesses when they're growing at that rate and you're self-funding them is you never take a penny off the table. I mean, there's just, there's no money to take out of the business. It's all going back into more inventory when it's growing at that rate. And that was the situation we were in. I had lots and lots of gel pens and ice packs, but I can't pay my taxes or buy a house or whatever the things you would want to do with that. And it was just at a point where I started becoming overwhelmed with like fear of what could happen. You know, I think when you're young and Never been through business cycles before. It's easy to continue to run into the fire and just expect everything to go well. But I had been through a couple serious situations, all things out of my control, where a business went from being worth $10 million or $50 million down to a fraction of that overnight. And Amazon is a stressful place to play because even if you are doing everything completely white hat, You never know when either A, you talk about bad actors, you were just talking about that, a competitor can screw with you, or Amazon could perceive that you're doing something wrong, or you decide to update your credit card one day and they shut down your account for weeks at a time. I mean, these are obviously outlier events, but I started That's like what I came consumed with and that's all I could think about. And the brand that we had at that time that was best positioned to sell was Color. I really wanted to sell one of our other brands that we're finally going to get around to selling I think this year after all this time. But that's what we were and that's why I wanted to sell. Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel your pain on that. You never know. You plan an Amazon sandbox, and even if you're doing everything right, like you said, you can make one update. I had a buddy just call me like three days ago, literally, and say, Hey, Kevin, I don't know if you have the answer to this, but I'm reaching for straws here. We just went and made an update. They're in the beauty space. We made an update to our product. And within 30 minutes, I got a notice that 4,700 units were removed from inventory, our entire inventory, because Amazon's claiming they're all damaged. And then about an hour later, another ASIN that's not even a child of variation, the same thing happened to it. Like, what's going on here? They just completely shut down two ASINs and you can't get an answer. You don't know what's going on. It's like everything is good. There's no, You know, they're not expired. I don't know what's going on. And I was like, yeah, I gave him a couple ideas on what to do, but you never know when that kind of stuff is going to happen. It can really mess with you. And that's so I know, I get that completely. Taking some chips off the table is when you can is a good move. Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna say real quick. There are two really big events that happened to me previously. One was on the online poker space. And so, you know, we're building this gigantic company at the time. I mean, we were making life-changing amounts of money every month. I mean, it was crazy. Speaker 1: You know, you go from- You had like 70 employees or something like that, right? Speaker 2: We had 66 employees at our peak. I mean, it was crazy. And then we woke up one morning and they passed the UIGEA, which is the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, that got attached to a port security bill like in the middle of the night. Most senators and congressmen had no idea that I was even there. They were kind of all forced to vote for the bill because, you know, it was right after 9-11 and you couldn't vote for anything that was, you know, against anything that was, that seemed like you were anti-patriotic or anything like that from that perspective. And this is where pork, you know, comes on to bills. It was completely unrelated, but they got it attached to that. And then boom, overnight, now, You know, online gaming in the United States went from being completely legal to illegal. Which is funny because it's come back around full circle now and it's basically legal in most places. It's funny how things have worked out over time, but at that moment, I mean, it literally cost us tens of millions of dollars. I mean, without using hyperbole or, you know, and so it's also why I think I just don't get rattled by things anymore because you go through a couple of these things and you You know, you become numb to it. And so the other time it happened to me was after the online poker fiasco, I got into other affiliate marketing stuff and woke up one morning to Google banning all of our stuff for Black Hat stuff, which we deserve, by the way. I mean, we were doing Black Hat things, but now it's why I'm so anti-Black Hat, because I don't want to ever experience that again from the wrath of Amazon. But yeah, I mean, I think because I know that feeling of waking up one morning and being like, oh God, like life is over. I wanted to take some chips off the table and you know I get in retrospect it was just my mind making me crazy and it was not a great business decision. Speaker 1: Well yeah that wasn't your first time to sell though didn't you have a was it tread treadmill.com which is a like a drop shipping fitness site or something and then that's the one that you had the problems with the Google SEO when they. Unknown Speaker: We did not. Speaker 1: Oh, no, that's a different one. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 2: That was, that was a different affiliate thing. So treadmill.com was our first four way into e-commerce and we had bought the domain. I'm a kind of a domainer, just a park domain and started deciding one day we wanted to start selling things online. And that was just the thing that happened to be there at that time. And the reason we sold that business, we actually never, we never had a problem with that in terms of, A downfall or anything, we actually did pretty well with it. It was just, for me, it was a miserable business. It taught me a lot about e-commerce and I obviously stuck with e-commerce after we sold that in January of 2015. But you mentioned it was dropshipping. And dropshipping immediately conveys you're out of control, right? Like in terms of like, you don't have any control over the process, someone else is doing the fulfillment for you. And so this is not a box of crackers that's being shipped. This is a 2000 pound piece of equipment that shows up late, shows up damaged, you know, all the different things that could go wrong were going wrong. And We had just nothing but angry customers and it ate me up from the inside out and I wanted to sell it for that reason. Speaker 1: How's it doing now? I think it's still there, right? Speaker 2: I believe what happened, the person that ultimately bought it from us bought it for his teenage daughter to run a business and get into entrepreneurship. I never talked to the guy after the sale. Like I had 30 days of training that I had to do. I had every day for an hour, Monday through Friday, and I did that because I am a man of my word. And the day That ended, I never heard a word from him again. And you know, it's inevitable when you sell something, you're always curious how things are going. I hop on colorit.com probably twice a year. I'm just curious how things are going, how things look or whatever. Do the same thing for treadmill.com. And so every six months or so, it was like the same exact imagery was up there. We had sold it relatively shortly. It was right after Christmas of that year. And so all the banners and stuff on that page are all the New Year's resolution stuff. It was the same banner for two years, like nothing changed. I'm like, oh God, this was a bad investment for this guy. His daughter probably never had any interest in it. And now I believe what happened, and I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I believe what happened was that one of the manufacturers bought the domain from him and has put up a site there for them. Speaker 1: So is that hard? Is it like giving up your baby for adoption when you sell one of the businesses? Speaker 2: It is to some extent, but I also I'm very compartmentalized in my mind with this stuff, right? I mean, you're selling it. It's someone else's thing now. Like, you have no ownership in it. Whatever they do is completely out of your control. If I could pick one of the two, I'd rather it go the way that Matt has, where they have continued to grow it and kind of follow in our footsteps and have success. That makes me way happier than what happened with Treadmill, but at the end of the day, I probably don't care. I mean, I really, I have the money. I have no more dog in the fight. I got what I wanted out of it at the time and made the best decision I could at the time for both of those transactions. For Treadmill, I wasn't as proud of it and had that it's my baby feeling because I hated the business. Colorado, I definitely had that. I really enjoyed that business and got a lot of personal fulfillment out of running it. It was a great brand. And again, in retrospect, just because it had so many great qualities, I really do miss it. Speaker 1: So what about with your team? You had some of the, I think you mentioned on one of your podcasts when y'all were talking about this, some of the Filipino team actually went with the sale. Is that maybe the personal connections and the people that you're dealing with there? Was that maybe one of the harder parts about it? Speaker 2: It was and it wasn't. I think it was more difficult just actually probably the customers and just the feeling of the products and stuff. I actually was excited for the team more than anything because I felt like with Matt and one of the reasons we picked him over Another offer that we had that was actually higher at the time, I thought that Matt would take better care of everybody, the brand and the team. And it really has worked out that way. So I'm very happy for them. Like everyone that went, I think there were four employees that went, I believe they're all still there. And one of them has become like the manager of the whole operation over there. I think they have like 50 or 60 people or something crazy over there now. I'm not sure the exact number, but I know she's doing quite well. And that makes me very happy because, I mean, These are the types of opportunities that only come around every so often and you need an event like this to be able to provide that type of opportunity because she was like our second or third in charge at our old organization. She never was going to like surpass the person who's still managing our other businesses. And so I don't know, I'm quite happy that that worked out that way. It was actually a huge win for them, which makes me happy for them. Speaker 1: And you've been an entrepreneur pretty much your whole life, right? I mean, you, you didn't, I don't, I don't, I think you mentioned in the past, you didn't go to college. You started selling on eBay back, uh, before nine 11, back around the same time I was selling on eBay, like 96, 97, 98, somewhere around in there. And you've, have you actually worked for somebody else other than maybe a teenage teenage job or have, or have you been an entrepreneur your whole life? Speaker 2: I worked for someone else for a total of eight years. The first job was at this company called Donoho Construction. They were in downtown Washington, D.C. They were a huge construction and project management company. And my first business was doing computer consulting, just various computer consulting back then. And they were one of my clients. And they offered me a full-time job, which I accepted because I felt like There was just so much to learn there. It was this IT department that was overwhelming to me and I thought that it would just be a great learning experience and basically paid training, college training if you will, on the job. And so I took that job and I lasted there one year. The main reason that I just couldn't deal with it anymore was the damn traffic trying to get into Washington DC every day was just completely unbearable. It was ridiculous and I felt like I learned everything that I could in that year. And went back to a consulting arrangement with them and started getting other clients and kind of going back into that consulting thing. And the thing that's funny is another one of the companies that was one of my clients then offered me a full-time job a few years later. And I took that and that one I stuck out for seven years. I really enjoyed it actually. The reason I took the job, you know, at that time I was having a really hard time growing my business past the solopreneur consultant. I'd hire people and they weren't very reliable and they You know, make me look really bad. I kept on having this problem with that. You're always at this stage of where you're driving around the Capital Beltway with Burger King in your hand, trying to like drive to the next appointment and eat and drive and do all this from the car at the same time. It was quite stressful. I was on call 24-7 because I had a pager. Back when pagers were cool. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: It was, it was tough. Speaker 1: You had to pull over and find a payphone to actually return the page. Speaker 2: This is, this is not a joke. This is real life. That's how that was. Speaker 1: Yeah, that was. For all you young'uns out there, you had a little device on your belt that would beep if someone trying to get ahold of you and you have to stop and find a phone somewhere. Speaker 2: And your friends would constantly page you with boobs if you turned it upside down. I'm sure we were. So yeah, it's it's funny to look back. But yeah, I mean, these guys offer me just like an offer I could not refuse to come run their IT department. And I loved it. I mean, it was the thing that was cool about it was that they were growing at such a crazy rate. And Very quickly, I excelled there. I got on the executive team and was really along for the ride in the room where it happens, I guess, to quote Hamilton. And it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was, I learned a ton. I'm always looking to learn something, right? And I really enjoyed learning a ton about things that were way outside my purview, you know, HR issues, accounting things. I mean, Just corporate politics, all the things that seem stupid, but I enjoyed being along that ride because we went from like 25 people to 250-ish people or whatever it was when I left. And it was really enjoyable. I also took on additional responsibility eventually outside the IT department. I won employee of the year the year before I left because I became such an instrumental part of that organization at that time. I really enjoyed it, but then like everything else, it kind of ran its course. And at the end of the day, like I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And so the last year that I was there, I was starting because what ended up happening was the company started going backwards. Right. I mean, I was, my position was never in jeopardy. I probably could still be there easily today. That would be no problem. But the excitement of being there and riding that wave, um, kind of came to an end and it was, we had to have some layoffs and it was just, there wasn't any excitement anymore. It was just, let's just maintain what we have. And I was like instantly bored in that environment. And I was just like, okay, what am I going to do next? And I started thinking about that and pretty quickly came up with the next thing. Speaker 1: So you said entrepreneur is in your blood. What do you think it takes to be a true entrepreneur? I mean, there's a lot of people that don't want to work for the man. They don't want to, they want to quit their job. They want this, what they believe is financial and time freedom sometimes, when actually it can actually turn into the opposite of that. And you know, they see something on YouTube, it may be selling on Amazon or whatever the next shiny object is. So they see some webinar and people are painting this picture. But most people can't cut it. What do you think it is that it takes to be an entrepreneur and actually really make it in this game, whether that's selling on Amazon or whatever it may be? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's two classes of entrepreneurs. I've talked a lot about this over the years. I think that there's like the equivalent of an alcoholic or a heroin addict or a gambling addiction or something along those lines. I think it's the addictive part of entrepreneurship. I'm definitely in this bucket, so I feel like I can speak to this from the inside. And I think there's like the other type of entrepreneur that's probably a lot more calculated and isn't doing it for the thrill or for the dopamine hit. But either way, you have to be willing to to take relatively large risks, right? And be willing to fail often and pick yourself back up and continue. Every business, like literally every successful business that I've had, had incredibly dark days early on to where it almost didn't make it. And then we got over that hump and then it became, you know, this overnight quote, unquote, overnight success story. Mike Jackness is a genius and you're so smart, but it's not that it's, it's far from that. It's first of all, it's, you know, I probably tried five to 10 other things before that, that all failed miserably. And no one ever wants to talk about those things until you find the thing that does really work. And along the way, I mean, you starting in something where, you know, nothing about it. And so of course you're going to do a bunch of dumb crap along the way. Until you you find your way and whether that was affiliate marketing or e-commerce or computer consulting or whatever it is like all of those things had their periods of immense dark days. And you got to be able to fight through that. There is no one that you can go crying your beer to. No one's going to listen to you. They don't care. No one cares out there. I mean, no one really cares. They're not going to write you a check level care. They might listen to you or give you a hug and feel bad for you, but they're not going to actually I mean, you are on your own. It is tough where as an employee, I mean, you can complain to your boss or ask for better treatment for this or that or the other or whatever it might be. When something goes wrong, you still get paid unless they fire you, then you can go get another job. But I mean, there are years in entrepreneurship where I have reported a loss of my tax return and still paying lots of people all along the way. You have to have the ability to do that. And I think that it's really quite funny because I think that back in the poker days, it really helped with this. It equips you. This is back before I was doing it as a business, but you win and lose large pots. That you lose a large pot that you should have won, right? And it's pots that you shouldn't have won or whatever, but like you experience these types of things. And I would equate, it's a very similar thing. You have to be willing in business and Amazon to place a $10,000, $25,000, $100,000 order for some product that you haven't sold the first one yet. But the Helium 10 data and your intuition and all of your experience leading up to that point tell you this is going to be a successful product. It doesn't guarantee you anything, but we obviously now have a pretty long track record of doing this. It seems easy now, but in the beginning, You're taking these crazy chances, but they're calculated. They should work, but there's no guarantee, and no one's going to give you a refund if it doesn't work. Speaker 1: Are you still playing poker now? Speaker 2: Not as much. It's interesting. I think I get bored of things relatively quickly, and I feel like I have literally seen everything that can happen in poker. And it's just not as interesting and exciting to me anymore. The other thing is that anybody listening to this, like, please don't be offended. The average poker player is pretty miserable to be around. It's just, they're constantly complaining, you know, I can't believe this guy called with that. And I got this horrible bad beat. And it just, it's not. And it brings out a lot of gambling tendencies, which I know I have that addictive kind of personality. And so it just, it isn't as enjoyable for me anymore, like it used to be. Cause I, again, I think I've seen it all. I've seen every bad beat. I've seen people vomit on the table. I've seen people throw the table over. I've seen people get thrown out. I've seen people say the weirdest things. I mean, it just, you know, it's just, it's a weird environment that. I don't enjoy as much anymore now. I still do play poker, but it's just not at the level that I used to. It's a rarity and a treat at this point. Speaker 1: So one of the benefits, though, I think you've gotten off of this entrepreneurship is actually a little bit of freedom as well, because didn't you actually live in a, like an Airstream trailer for a while and traveling around and running a business or something like that? Speaker 2: We did. We did that twice, actually. It was never actually an Airstream, but one time we had a, for a couple of years, we had a 45 foot RV bus that we like towed our car behind. That was our first RV and went back and forth across the country a couple of times. It was awesome. Speaker 1: How long, how long were those trips? Speaker 2: Oh, we would go out for months at a time. I mean, many, many months at a time. I think at one point the longest trip was probably close to nine months. Where we went to the East Coast and back and took our time doing it. Yeah. Speaker 1: And just run your business from the RV? Did you have a good satellite? This is probably before Elon had Starlink and stuff. Did you have to stop at Starbucks and upload your files? Speaker 2: We did. Both RV trips ended with me being frustrated with internet. So the first one was after the poker stuff. We sold everything and hadn't, I just took a year off basically. So we weren't actually really working, but I was starting to get back into like, okay, this is what I want to do next. I did start working on the road and eventually I was just like, I can't, I can't work from the road. This was like 2012, maybe I think in that, in that timeframe, there just wasn't any infrastructure out there to do this. And I, I came back and sold the RV and started up again. And then after we sold Color It, We still had businesses, and so I tried to work from the road in 2019. It was actually 2020 is when we bought the RV, so it was after COVID. After we sold the RV, we started traveling full-time, and we were actually over in Asia when COVID hit. And we came back and then we RVd. And ultimately, internet is what brought me back then as well. And now that Starlink's out, I got the itch to go do this again, because I feel like that whole problem is finally solved. And yes, we could certainly, at this juncture, I think, work from the road with Starlink. Speaker 1: That's a lot of work though traveling around you get a hookup you get a it's it's a lot of people don't realize how much work that is I mean, it's great. You get to go to a different place and see see The USA and there's a lot to see here that a lot of people may not even realize You don't need to go international to see cool stuff. I mean the US has got some amazing stuff 100% agree, but it's a lot of work when you're out there on the road, too. Speaker 2: You know, we really had it down to a science, especially in the van, because the second RV was a van and we didn't have the tow vehicle and all the other. We kind of learned that traveling with a big footprint was exactly what you said, was a ton of work, and it made it miserable to move from place to place. The 25 foot Mercedes conversion sprinter with the extra long wheelbase and the full bathroom and everything on board and kitchen. I mean, we had everything that we needed, but we're just on a smaller footprint. And so we would pull into an RV park and be hooked up usually within three to five minutes. My wife and I would just, we knew exactly what to do. It was down to a science. It didn't even feel like much more than like doing your evening ritual at home where you're like cleaning the dishes and kind of cleaning up the kitchen before going to bed or something. We really had it down to a science. And I don't know, like, traveling, I mean, I've been to 57 countries. I've been to 48 states. And traveling has really taught me so much about life in the world. When I was younger, I I never traveled anywhere. I mean, we grew up relatively poor and my thought process was basically all around Northern Virginia and my beliefs in life and everything was this Washington DC suburb lifestyle. And when you grow up with that and that's all you ever interface with, you have a hard time understanding how anybody could ever think or be different than you. And you start traveling the world and you realize that like, There's just so much diversity out there and things are so different, but also people are so the same. So it's a really interesting confluence of those two things. But you really get to see what true poverty is in parts of the world and appreciate the United States so much more. You also get to see true amazing other countries and maybe we can learn some things from them, which I think we've lost our way with that. The other thing about traveling through the U.S. is you get out of these liberal bubbles of cities and see farmland and small towns and just really struggling parts of America and really start to sympathize and understand why people might think differently than you in so many ways, on so many levels. And I don't know, I really, really enjoy that. It, to me, is just so awesome because whenever we do these trips across the country, we stay off the interstate and we do it very slowly and we stop in the smallest, weirdest towns and every opportunity to go into a restaurant or a bar and talk to the local people. It's really, really eye-opening. You hear about how their town has struggled for the last 50 years and everyone's forgotten about them and you can physically see it in the buildings and the town and in their voice and their eyes and just get a different appreciation. I think that it's made me a completely different person and I wouldn't change that traveling for the world. Speaker 1: Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I've been to 94 countries and I think it's 47 or 48 states. Some of those countries 15 or 20 times. Some of them just once, but I look at the number, probably at least 25% of them multiple times. Speaker 2: That's insane. That's amazing. Speaker 1: It's the best education you can get. I mean, I turned 40 and I'm an old guy, but when I turned 40 in 2007, I decided I'm going to travel for a year and I'm just going to go places I want to go. We were doing a business at the time with photography and we were doing a lot of travel to do photo shoots with models and stuff on different cool places, beaches. Castles and everything, but there's places that I wanted to go that just, it didn't make sense for us to actually go there and do a shoot. It's too expensive or whatever. Places like Bali, for example, or Vietnam or places like that. So I said, I'm gonna travel for a year. And for this one year, I'm just gonna go. I'm not gonna go backpacking it and stay in hostels, but I'm not gonna, you know, I don't need the Four Seasons or luxury either, unless it makes sense. If I'm in Tahiti, And the experience in Tahiti is spending $1,000 a night to stay in an overwater bungalow with a clear glass bottom floor where you can see the fish swimming underneath. Then I'm going to do that. But I didn't need to stay in, you know, the ritzy places everywhere. And part of travel to me is the food. You know, like you stopped in bars and restaurants and talked to the people. I love to go into just grocery stores and just walk the aisles of a grocery store in a foreign country. I had times where, you know, on food, sometimes I would hire a guide and a local guy that would take me around and a driver, especially if I didn't speak the language. Like if I was in Morocco, for example, to make things a little bit easier and I could see more stuff. And they would take me around and it'd be lunchtime and they're like, oh, here's the restaurant. We'll be back, you know, in an hour to pick you up. I'm like looking at the menu, it's in seven languages. I'm like, I'm not eating here. No, no, this is the place, you know, this is where all the tourists eat. I said, where are you guys going? They're like, we're going around the corner. You know, to this one place. I said, I'm going with you. And so I went with them. And then, you know, at the end of the trip, I was joking. This was, you know, probably 2008, 2009. And we passed a McDonald's a couple of days into the trip. And I said, oh, the American embassy. Look, McDonald's. It's the U.S. embassy. It's everywhere. Them and KFC. And I was like, have you ever eaten one of those? And they're like, no, we don't go to that place. Is it even real food? I don't know if it's real chicken. And so we made a deal that at the end of the trip, before they took me to the airport, we're going to go to McDonald's. And so I took them to McDonald's and they had never been into a McDonald's. And I ordered some chicken nuggets and a Quarter pounder or something like that. So they just order the exact same thing as me and they're eating their chicken nuggets going. What is this? You know, it was it was fun, but you don't get those and sometimes, you know, I was I remember I was in Cambodia and I had a local guy there and it and even the Philippines happened in the Philippines too. By the end of a five or six day trip with a local person, you become like their buddy and they're inviting you to their house and they're like you're going into their life. A little shack and they borrowed a plastic chair from the neighbors that you could sit there and the wife is making food for you and you know you're getting to know them and you can't have those experiences. That's true travel, not being a tourist but an actual traveler. And it changes you. And people was like, I spent probably from 2007 to 2014, I did a lot of travel. And for seven years, and I'd be gone about two weeks of every month. So I set up my business, I had an internet based business. I wasn't doing Amazon at that time. I mean, I was selling on Amazon, but not like I am now. And I would just, I would take two, 10 days to two weeks and I'd go somewhere, sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends or family that wanted to go with me. And I just, it became addictive. And like you go somewhere and you find out about some other place like, man, I got to go there. I got to see this. It's the best education you can get. And I wish more people would do it because now when I see the news and they're talking about this earthquake in Turkey that just happened a while ago, I can relate to it. Or they're talking about something going on in Israel. I can relate to it. Or it's not the same as when you see it in a movie or you see it in a documentary. And that's something that I think It's sad that so many Americans don't have passports or their idea of international travel is going to Cancun or going on a cruise to the Caribbean. It's pathetic actually and I think it should be mandatory that every 18 or 19 or 20 year old actually spend a year traveling and go places where you don't speak the language, you don't know what the heck the food is and learn. It's a really cool world out there and it's sad that so many people don't understand it. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we obviously see very much eye to eye here. I couldn't agree more with you. I talk about this all the time. There's one of the things you were just talking about that I want to just kind of mention. You mentioned Going to people's houses and the food, the thing that is remarkable to me, you talk about how things are so different around the world, things are so the same. The thing that I've seen the constant is people are so proud of their food. They're never happier. I kind of get emotional, just kind of choked up talking about it because it's just like they're never happier than making you something and letting you experience their culture. For that reason, I never say no to anything. If someone's willing to eat it with me, no matter how crazy or strange it is... There's only been one time where I wouldn't eat something and I'll just eat it because if they're enjoying it and they're proud of it, you never know what you might experience and even if you don't like it, you can still get it down, right? I mean, there's been very few times where I didn't like something and someone's like, oh man, this is amazing. It's hard to not experience the same thing and they're just so proud of that. Speaker 1: What's that dish in the Philippines where it's a bird? Yeah, have you done that? Speaker 2: It's not going to happen. Speaker 1: It's not going to happen for me either. Speaker 2: It's not going to happen. I mean, it's really one of the only things that like every time I go over there to see my team, they try it again. This last year when I was there, I'm like, guys, it just, it isn't going to happen. I'll be all the other stuff. When we went out to a couple of Filipino restaurants and had just some amazing, amazing meals and dishes. And I'm like, just don't order the Balut because it's like, we're going to cause an embarrassment. And I don't want to do that because I'm not, I'm not eating it. I'm just not eating it. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it is amazing. The thing is, when I talk to the locals, it's like red and blue in this country. It's either you're on one team or the other. You're on team blue or not. The ones that love it are like, this is the most amazing thing. And the other just like, it's the most disgusting thing you'll ever eat. And I don't want to take a chance of like... Having a negative experience when I know there's all this other amazing food. But when I go to the Philippines very often, almost every trip, like one of our employees will cook some dish and we'll have that while there. And it's just, I don't know, like you can have this connection through food, even if you don't speak, like they all speak English. So that's not, it's not a communication thing, but like in China, you know, on these, these sourcing trips, I don't speak a freaking, I speak 10 words of Chinese. All right. And so, It's so cold, like they're saying something gibberish to you, but they're handing you the food and saying, please, please, please, you know, like you can tell what they're saying and you're having this experience. They're having the experience of seeing how you react to it, how they react to you reacting to it. And they want to like cheers you. And I don't like, I mean, this has happened everywhere around the world. And I'm the same way as you're like, I don't want to go to the touristy place. I tell the cab driver, take me to where you go for your birthday or your anniversary. Like, what's your restaurant? And then you come join me. Like turn off the meter and let's go in and have lunch together or whatever. And those have been like the most amazing experiences. I mean, I just, I don't know. I mean, I love food. I mean, I wish I didn't love it so much as I always struggle like trying to. Speaker 1: So what do you say, you're a foodie? Like my brother once told me, we were in a nice restaurant, and it's like, Keith, how do you like this nice restaurant? And he's like, I don't care, I'm just a dude that eats. I'm just a dude that loves to eat. I don't care. But me, I like to go to, you know, I like the street food, and that's fine, but I also like to go to somewhere where I don't know what the heck half of these words are on the menu, and they're just serving it to you, and you know, some of it you like, and some of it you're like, eh, not so good, and my wife and I are now, mostly me, but she's more than happy to tag along on a mission to go to as many of the top 100 restaurants in the world as we can. Speaker 2: I think that that's an experience more than the food. That's how I look at it when I go to those types of restaurants. Obviously, the food is amazing, but it's more in the experience category and I love experiences. I'm a minimalist now. I don't care about belongings really at all. It's all about just experiences of traveling, of going to sporting events, to going to concerts, to spending time with friends and learning new games. We live in Las Vegas, we have a whole smorgasbord that can take you next time you're in town to some pretty cool places. I love that, but I also grew up poor and I can eat the street food and actually often do. When I'm in a place like Thailand, street food heaven, Hong Kong, street food heaven, there's lots of places around the world where I'd rather eat the street food. Taiwan, oh my god, and that's a crazy country because you can eat the street food, you can go have a meal for $1.50 on the street at the night market, and then you can go have a $1,000 meal at the top of the tall tower there in that crazy restaurant. Hong Kong is the same way. And I love both, I love both equally because I like to see both sides of it. And then on the way home from those trips, I'm often like, internalizing the disparity between the haves and the have-nots and just struggling with how so many people in the world don't get to live the amazing life that I do and try to appreciate that stuff because, you know, it's not normal to be able to do what you and I can do. Speaker 1: No, no, it's not. Sometimes it actually jades me, you know, and I have to be careful with that where, you know, I'll be, I remember I went to a mastermind a couple years ago and they had this nice, it was decent food in this place, but I was just like, man, this, everybody there was loving the food. And I was like, this food is just horrible. You know, for a place like this, it should have better food. It can jade you, but then you got to stop exactly like you just said. And it's like, look, I've had experiences that most people would never get to have. So I got to put everything in perspective. And like you said, when I did all this traveling, I probably spent over seven years between airfares and hotels and guides. And I was actually buying stuff for my house, furniture and different things, you know, all these places. I probably spent half a million bucks total. And a lot of people were like, Kevin, you're crazy. You know, you could have taken that half a million dollars and invested in the stock market and business and what could that half a million be now? It might be two, five, ten million, who knows what it would be. I'm like, yeah, it could be also zero. But now I have experiences that will never be taken away from me until I die. To me life is about the, it's not about how much money you have or how much money you make or what kind of car you drive or how fancy your house is. It's about the, and I think you're going to agree with me because we've just talked about both of these, it's about the experiences you have and the people that you meet. You know, and like you did when you traveled, traveled in the RV and the van, you know, stop in little towns and just sitting there in a bar talking to the local guy. Those are, that's the people, you know, and the experiences you have of doing that or eating at a nice restaurant or eating street food. You can't take that stuff away. And I think as entrepreneurs and in our society, it says to do things a certain way. And I was in my 40s when I did a lot of, I mean, I traveled my entire life, but when I did a heavy amount of traveling, it was in my 40s and people were like, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be working in a job. The 30s are for learning, the 40s are for earning. You do all this travel when you retire at 65 or 70. I'm like, how do I know that I'm going to be able to crawl into a little manhole in Vietnam when I'm 70 years old or walk up the Great Wall of China? I'd rather do it now where it can actually impact my life and influence everything that I do rather than when I'm in my later years and it's not going to be the same. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, another thing I couldn't agree more with, I think, you know, we're like lemmings with society in some ways, right? Everyone follows each other. It's like a flock of birds, like switching directions or something. Everybody just kind of follows everybody regardless of If it makes sense or not, I think society has a lot of things wrong and you're not guaranteed anything. You're not guaranteed to make it to your 60s and go have these things, right? And so I try to balance to the best of I can now. I mean, I talk about the Fort Berner theory a lot. Because it's really changed my life. But, you know, I used to have the work burner just cranked up all the way and didn't do any of this stuff. You know, it's just unhealthy for myself. It's bad for relationships around me. And no one ever, you know, who's dying on their deathbed is like, man, I wish I worked more, right? Like, never happens, ever, ever, ever, ever. And so, you know, I've done my best to balance. Yeah, I still care about my business and I still want to make money. But I also feel it to be incredibly necessary to make sure that I'm culturally enriching myself along the way, right? And so the way that we've done that, I mean, we now, you talk about it doesn't matter what kind of house you have or car you drive in, I completely agree. We live in the smallest, cheapest house I've ever lived in. Literally ever, like cheaper than the first one I had back in the 90s. We have one car. It's a nice car. We do have a Tesla, but like, we have one car between us. Speaker 1: And that's okay. Speaker 2: I mean, if you, if you're making money, it's okay to have, you know, I mean, it's the cheap Tesla, but like, you know, it's, you know, I don't, I don't own a Rolex or a watch or any other jewelry or things. I mean, and so it gives me plenty of money to go do all those other things and not have to worry about it. And that's what we do. I mean, I just go spend it all on experiences because the physical things you can't take with you and they mean nothing. But most of the stuff crap like ends up in a drawer somewhere or in the back of a closet or... You know, the dopamine hit a vine on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or whatever, you know, and you're, the dopamine and the excitement you have of having this thing wanes, right? But the memories, like we were just sitting here talking about, like, I know that I could sit here for hours and talk to you about these trips and like that stuff never gets old, right? Like I will cherish and remember this stuff Again, I get emotional even just talking about that because it means so much to me. It's been so awesome. And coming home to some $100,000 vase or piece of artwork or having a gold medallion around my chest means nothing. Get no actual user satisfaction out of that versus the other stuff. And, hey, listen, that's the way I feel. I'm not trying to push that on everybody else that's listening. If you enjoy the vase or the artwork or the cars or whatever, then go do you. But for me, I've, you know, been lucky enough to talk to other people that helped me for myself just kind of realize that that's not what I want, right? And so, you know, you only get to live your life once and go do your thing that's going to make you happy and stop worrying about what everybody else thinks about you or what society says you should go do or whatever because you can't hit replay on anything. Speaker 1: That's so true. And one of the things I noticed about you too is that you love to give back. You love to help others. And I think I read or heard you say somewhere one time where if you actually do, you don't do a lot of like private consulting or anything or private mentorship, but when you do, It's really to help somebody and whatever they end up paying you, you donate that. Speaker 2: That's true. Speaker 1: That's really cool. Everybody needs a helping hand. Nobody can get to where they're at without a little bit of luck or a little bit of guidance or a helping hand. What is your philosophy on that? Speaker 2: Well, I've gotten old enough and you know, I think when you're younger as well, you have a big ego and you want to think you're more important than you are. But the reality is that all the success I've had has been either because of luck or because of someone else helping in some way. Now, you create your own luck, right? I mean, it isn't like I'm lucky that we were successful doing Amazon or successful doing affiliate marketing, but we were because we were at the right place at the right time. Like I said, I did lots of other things that failed. And eventually, I mean come on, it was lucky as hell to be like getting started on Amazon in 2015. Let's just face it, that was a luck. And so, and along the way, like people helped in some capacity many times. And so, I don't know, my philosophy in life is if you can help somebody else, when you, like I've, I know I have developed a set of skills that are very unique and very valuable and it just took a lot A trial and error to get to that point. And if I can help someone else with a few words, not make those same mistakes or get to the next level, that doesn't hurt me in any way. Because I mean, the Amazon world is so big. I'm not going to go teach someone else how to sell coloring books for crying out loud. But there's plenty of other products out there or things and I can just be like, hey man, look, like this is a really bad idea for these reasons. I already did this and lost a bunch of money and wasted much time. Like here's a better way to do it, right? And I really enjoy that because I can affect change and help people Expedientially more by doing that than I ever could at a soup kitchen or someplace else where my skills are no more valuable than the next guy there. But in entrepreneurship and in business, I can help the next guy, I think, at an exponential rate because I have the experience and there aren't a lot of other people that can have that conversation or are willing to have that conversation. And so when I have those opportunities, I like to do it because I can then look back and say, look, that guy made a million dollars or $10 million or whatever because of my help and my advice. That then helps his family and his kids and hopefully they will be philanthropic as well at some point and give back in some other way. Can't guarantee that, but in my mind. And so if they do pay me, the money that I get for it, I mean, I have my causes and things that I like to support. And so, and it also was just a cool way because of EcomCrew, it comes up all the time. Like, will you do one-on-one consulting? And originally the answer was no. And I was like, you know what, I can do this. Have the positive impact that we were just talking about and then just donate the money. Then I don't feel like my crazy ask on my hourly rate is obnoxious because now it's all 100% going to charity. And I have them make the donation. Like I don't even want to take the money. Like I just, you make the donation under my name, send me the receipt and we're good. Speaker 1: So maybe you got to learn to be a chef so you can cook for other people. Speaker 2: I do enjoy cooking. Speaker 1: That's the way to take it, like we were talking about, you know, in different places when we traveled. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the problem I'm having now is I've gotten into healthy eating a lot more, and so it's becoming a lot more difficult to have these trips and go eat the crazy food that I used to go eat, most of which is not very healthy, you know, whether it's fried or animal products of some kind or whatever. I don't know, like I, we both were talking about going to the doctor and you start going to like a, I go very often and just make sure my blood work is in good shape. And, you know, quite frankly, you know, entrepreneurship wrecked my health when I was younger. A lot of stress, a lot of bad eating, a lot of bad habits, sedentary habits. And, you know, I became aware of that. You start going and actually taking care of yourself and it was just like, hey man, you got high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, like all these other things, like your actual age is much lower than your age, in terms of like their health age or whatever they call that. I was like, Oh my God, this is like, this is hard to handle, like to hear this stuff. And so I've been trying to do a much better job with that stuff. And now it makes it way more difficult to like, to go do these food binges and other countries. Speaker 1: That is true. That is one of the downside. Speaker 2: Lechon is not very good for you, but it tastes damn good when you go to the Philippines. Speaker 1: Well, Mike, I really appreciate you taking the time today and coming on and speaking and sharing your story with us. It's very inspirational and you've been doing an awesome job out there in your companies and what you're doing for the community and everything through the EcomCrew podcast and initiatives that you're doing. So I just want to say keep up the good work, man, and I appreciate you coming on the AM-PM Podcast and sharing with us. Speaker 2: Definitely, and I think we just were talking about doing a reciprocal, so we'll have you come do the EcomCrew Podcast and that way we can spread the love a little bit. Speaker 1: I'll be happy to do that anytime. Speaker 2: Awesome. Speaker 1: It was great speaking with Mike about his e-commerce journey and some of his philosophies on life that are very similar to mine, especially regarding the travel and the experiences. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. We'll be back again next week with another great episode. But before I leave you, I've got the golden nugget for this week. Just because it didn't work doesn't mean it was the wrong choice. The world is full of probabilities. Not certainties. Find a game where the probabilities favor you and keep at it. It's basically what Mike said in the interview. Just because it doesn't work doesn't mean it was the wrong choice. The world is full of probabilities, not certainties. Find a game where the probabilities favor you and keep at it. We'll see you again next week. Oh.