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Special guest, business coach Norman “The Beard Guy” Farrar brings us a wide range of business thoughts on our latest episode.
Join us as we talk about Norman’s expertise from helping businesses have success with Amazon, to starting various companies (like Soap.Club), to pivoting to upping his podcasting game in result of the changes COVID-19 has brought to all of us.
Norman was a kick to chat with, and we know you’ll love this episode as well!
Norman Farrar’s Website – https://normanfarrar.com/
Soap.Club – https://soap.club/
Podcasts
Lunch With Norm Podcast – https://lunchwithnorm.com/
(live on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook on Mon, Wed, Fri)
I Know This Guy…Podcast – https://iknowthisguy.com/
Transcription
Brian: Welcome back to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast, today’s show featuring Norman he is something quite different than what we’re used to, when it comes to interviews.
Let me tell you why.
We don’t focus as much on the reason why we picked him out to interview him, particularly for the show, which is his website, Soap.Club, we do hit on it, on how he came about it, and how he really thinks that it was a mistake to start that website. But he goes through all that when we get to it.
The rest of the time, he is really an expert when it comes to e commerce and especially in the area of Amazon.com. This is one of those that’s very business oriented.
So no matter what type of business you have, this would be useful to you. But off the grid business owners really need to hear what Norman has to say.
That’s why I included it on our podcast.
Join me at the end for a quick commentary, where we kind of go over some ideas that he produced really good episode. Stay tuned.
Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.
If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.
You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.
We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.
From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.
Brian: Entrepreneur, businessmen Norman, “The Beard Guy” Farrar stands at the forefront of the economic mega machine known as Amazon Marketplace.
As a leading expert with over 25 years of product sourcing development and branding expertise, Norm is an advisor to many and an inspiration to all throughout his career.
He’s worked with big brands including Mercedes, Coke, Dell, Microsoft target, Hershey 20th Century Fox, Molsons, Cadbury, and a wide variety of emerging businesses that are celebrating sudden escalation and profitability and sales as a result of taking action on his advice and proven methods.
Norm Farrar, Welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Norm: Hey, I’m very happy to be here.
Brian: Well, that’s awesome. So other than what we heard from your bio, why don’t you let everyone know a little bit about what you do on a day to day basis.
Norm: Oh my gosh.
So on a day to day, actually, it starts the night before, I’m one of these old guys, if you can’t see me, I’m an old guy in the business, but I always like to plan my day, the night before.
I always find if I know what I’m doing, things can always change. But if I plan ahead of time, then I know and then what I’ve tried to do for most of my life, is do everything that’s important first.
So my priority my task a gets the very first thing I do, before I look at anything I get into my main priority for the day, I check my emails only a few times a day.
And this is really important for entrepreneurs is that they have to go and clean up their b and c tasks. So I’ll take some time and just clean up those 5, 10, 20 things that I can get done.
The other thing that has been really great for my productivity is hiring somebody to go into my inbox and organize what I have to see and what I don’t have to see.
So it could be a question, it could be booking a meeting, or it could be an urgent response. I’ve gone from hundreds of emails down to a few emails.
So as long as I concentrate tasks, planet advanced, do a task, check your email once in a while. And also 100% you have to cut out other forms of communication.
I do I use a program called fronds to funnel all my communication either to me or an assistant, and also blockout, Skype and every other communication tool that I have, just for an hour at a time or two hours at a time, whatever time I need it.
I hope that answers the question.
Brian: Wow, that’s amazing. That’s gold right off the bat. That’s great stuff.
Just because we’re already into it here. Tell me more about hiring like an inbox manager.
How do you go about finding somebody like that?
Norm: I hire people for any repetitive task.
So you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re finding yourself in this roller coaster where you’re passionate about your product. Then you get to a point where you hire somebody and they’re never good enough.
Then you fire them and then you take it back yourself. You’re in the sales roller coaster.
It’s probably because you’re just not training people properly.
So what I’ve done is I have a camera on my screen, I use snag, it is usually pretty good, or loom, and I create tons of videos every day, especially if you’re starting out.
But what is repetitive?
What can be handed off?
My inbox can definitely be handed off, all communications.
So I have probably, I don’t know, maybe 8 to 10 communication networks, like think of it Slack, Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, there’s a bunch, and I’m probably forgetting a few.
But can you imagine just having everything going into one channel?
That if something comes up new, that you have somebody else logged into your account?
Is it important, or is it just the buddy saying hi, all you’re doing is taking the information that you would do on a regular basis, recorded. And that’s the beginning of training.
But the biggest thing that you need to do when you’re training and I learned this off the E-Myth Academy, Michael Gerber’s, famous book, I went through the E-Myth Academy.
And what it told me to do is, even if you’re a one person operation, one day, you’re going to be multiple people.
They all have to buy in to why you’re doing things, a certain way.
So one of the ways to start this, and that’s called a performance based culture. And that is getting people to do things on your behalf.
But getting them to do it extremely well, kind of like McDonald’s with consistency.
It’s creating an ESOP, or a policy and procedure. It’s defining why that’s important, your why you need that task to be done. It’s defining the key words that people might not know.
So for an Amazon seller, what’s FBA fulfilled by Amazon, what’s fbm?
You know, what Seller Central?
And so you can you can define these keywords for them.
So they understand, and then any prerequisites do they have to log in?
Oh, if you have to log in, here’s how you do it. If you have to set user permissions, this is how you do it a prerequisite before getting in to the SLP.
The most important part of an SLP. And SLP is a standard operating procedure is clearly doing multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple steps.
If you have to take your finger and drag your mouse up to the right hand corner, that’s a step. And then you can give it to somebody, you might have 20 or 30 steps. And then at the very end you have something that’s quantifiable.
How do you quantify, when do you check the reports to make sure when do you revise it.
So the training for this is very simple. Once you do this, and do one a month, it sounds like a lot of work.
But once you get into the role, you’re training your people to do all the slps for you, because they’ll know how to do it.
But you go through and you go through step by step, boom, you know, this is why it’s important. This is the definitions, this is and then you get into the ESOP.
They go you’ve shown them, then they go and do it. We have a sort of a three strike, and I don’t like using strike the first time there’s a mistake.
It’s usually because I made a mistake in the ESOP.
So I always get the VA to go and tell me what’s wrong, and how to fix it.
Oh, if you did this, I would have a better understanding, okay, great.
No yelling, no screaming, it’s on us, 99% of the time.
The second time, there’s a mistake. It’s okay, look at it, come back again.
What was it, Let’s correct it.
The third time, then we have to consider moving on. Because obviously the person doesn’t understand the task.
But that’s how we do it for everything.
We’ve got 400 policies and procedures, including a five page how to make a cup of coffee.
I’m not kidding. It’s five pages, and this is so important.
Like people go that’s just being stupid, right?
Well, no, it’s not because if you can’t make a cup of coffee policy, how you going to follow anything that’s important. And this is about buy in the time there was about 23 people in the office.
So getting 23 people a lot that don’t drink coffee, to buy in and understand why it’s important. Well, we have people coming into the office.
Okay, people coming in and they want coffee.
Well, they don’t want burnt coffee. They don’t want to wait 20 minutes to make coffee. They don’t want to have coffee that’s too watery, they want good coffee.
If we just had it on and it was made perfectly, then we can solve that problem. Who makes the coffee?
Well, first person that came in the morning was 5:30 in the morning.
He was a tea drinker.
But you got to make the coffee because this is now the standard operating procedure. Well, I’m not going to do that. We have to follow the rules and so anyways, it just it laid out why it was important?
Who’s going to do it?
Where is the coffee?
What are how you’re going to purchase it, ad literally where it is?
Here’s the cupboards, this is where you put it. This is, you know, oh, when do we buy new, more coffee, five pages?
Crazy.
Brain: That’s great, that’s fabulous. I mean, that’s just amazing ideas right there.
Anyone out there has never read Michael Gerber’s, E-Myth, or any of the E-Myth books in the series. You definitely got to get your hands on that, if you’re looking at growing your business.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about you, Norm. How did you end up at this place to where you’re at right now?
Norm: I am really a mutt when it comes to business, absolutely.
I dropped out of school, I went back. I always had business, like I can remember, other than lemonade stands. But my first business was a rock promotion company that I opened with four buddies back in the 80s, probably early 80s.
But anyways, I’ve always loved just doing things on my own.
My father was an entrepreneur, he had probably anyone given time 10, 20, 30 companies going, and some very large companies.
I always worked for him, since I was probably 10 years old, during the holidays and stuff got 10 cents an hour plus all the soda I could drink. But what this led me to believe that I don’t want to work for anybody.
I worked for a couple of people, I worked for the government, I was in the Army.
So I was an artillery guy for you know, just a short period of time. And then it was just, it was with the reserves.
Then I worked for another company and that did not last long. You know, one of the things about being an entrepreneur is I love moving on a dime, corporations, most corporations, larger corporations have to go through all these committees.
I know what’s right, at least I hate saying that. It sounds kind of arrogant, but I know what I want to do. So if it’s going to take six months to get a decision, I don’t want to take that time. I know what’s going right now.
My research is showing me this, let’s move forward.
I’ve always loved that.
So where things really started to come in for me was getting into the promo industry.
So I was involved with the promo industry, one of my really good friends and I we got together and we started this company. And this is actually a really great learning experience for me.
We decided, okay, we’re gonna go and sell like these coffee mugs, right?
Or pens and key chains.
It was Advertising Specialties. Basically, I’m selling a Bic pen for 25 cents, which 16,000 other companies are selling for, you know, 25 cents?
How can we make more money when the industry was dictating that to people in a company, this is the industry average, averaging was two people making 23% gross profit off of I think was $3,000 a year. That’s not a lot of money.
We sat out and we said how can we do this differently?
I love perceived value.
I talk about perceived value, and this is where I believe in vertical integration and perceived value. So perceived value for me was, okay, let’s take this black gildan 12 ounce tshirt, it’s imprinted.
Now we put our tag in it.
So it was you know, let’s say Angel Fish marketing, then we put it into a polybag. Then you put it into a box that’s white with our name on it, and that it’s got our tape on it with a fragile thing on so if it is thrown around is broken, and you can return the box.
Plus there’s an inspection certificate that says that the box was inspected.
Now people are getting it, and our really…our motto was on time, every time exactly as you ordered it.
Well, people loved it.
So we did all these things that cost us what nothing?
What does it cost for a card that’s it’s been inspected, or a fragile thing on your tape on a box. But what we were able to bring up is our average order for gross profit anyways was 45% rather than 23% gross margins.
Soon as people saw this in fortune five companies, they don’t care.
They only want if they’re going to be at a golf tournament and they have golf shirts.
They want them to arrive on time exactly like you ordered it. They were willing to pay double the price. So that’s where it started.
And then how do you take control over an industry that has no control?
We bought screening facilities.
We bought embroidery houses, we bought a courier, we bought cars back then no email, right.
It was courier all over cities and Toronto where we were at. That was a big, most of the headquarters. Were there for these fortune fives at least in Canada and then we bought storage and warehouses.
So we had it all in house, everything was coming in house.
We were doing catalog programs for companies. So like a Hudson’s Bay was giving us all their work. Oh, well, okay, we do that. So anyways, that was that.
That got me into into ecommerce, one of the Fortune 500 companies said, “hey, can you do you know, a dealer network where you put our dealer onto a mug or keychain?”
“Sure,” I had no idea.
I had no zero idea about the internet, but I took on the job, and we did it.
We actually used the fortune 500 companies, contractors to do it. So it was great.
And then people saw what we were doing. And they said, “oh, well, if you’re doing it with they’re doing it, we want it.”
So we got known for doing web design for fours and fives. Okay, we did that. T
hen it went, I told you it was a month. Then it went on to getting into sourcing we were one of back in the 90s, early 90s going to India, doing sourcing going to China direct doing sourcing, nobody was there.
We were there, and then getting in again to fulfillment and all these other things that are along with that.
At that point, my father saw what was going on and this was a big change.
He saw what was going on with us in China and making just the killing back then.
He said, “well, why don’t we open up a factory in Taiwan.”
And we can do some of what we’re doing over there hit with his business was doing over in Taiwan. We opened up two manufacturing facilities in Taiwan.
Got them going, going to American companies and just saying, “look, we can cut your cost by about 40 50%.”
They were just giving us a ton of work. So that company sold and then got involved with what was it specialty packaging, hand weight, we opened up a company in China.
So hand wipes that we still have it right now.
I’m not too involved with that. It’s mostly my brother and my father. But yeah, it’s there.
And it’s we still got a presence there.
Yeah, then Amazon.
Amazon came and it was like the perfect storm of all of this stuff.
God that was long winded.
Brian: No, that’s okay.
So you got into Amazon about when?
Norm: There was a program that came out called, AMM, back in about 2012, 2013.
I forget but it was Kindle books on Amazon. And I thought, “this sucks, this whole Amazon thing is gonna suck.”
And the buddy I went to to check this out with he said you got to come to Vegas, that AMM thing is now ASM. Amazing Selling Machine.
That was Matt Clark and Jason Katzenback. Both really great guys.
And I looked at it and I thought, “well, we could do this.”
This is where they’re, you know, what you got to take opportunity when it happens at the event.
And I hear those doctor talking. And he’s saying that it’s too much like he can’t understand Facebook ads and this and that.
He says if I could only he was a doctor, he says, “I know what I’m best that if I can only work on my strengths and have somebody else beat the s&p for me.”
I would just give it to them. I overheard it, I went, “I can do that for you.”
And he looked me and two weeks later, he wired me some cash.
He knew nothing, he knew not what the path of the product was.
He had no idea what the design was.
He had nothing. He had no idea.
But we were able to get it from China into Amazon. Get it off Amazon onto ecom, we built an exit strategy for them. We built his slps we basically built a business in a box for him.
And that’s been my business model for Amazon anyways, for the last, you know, four or five years.
Brian: Wow.
Norm: I didn’t even have a product on Amazon at the time. But it couldn’t be that hard.
Brian: Yeah. Well, that’s fabulous.
One of the first places where we found you was Soap.Club. I think our producer Sean E. Douglas tracked you down there. Tell us a little bit about how you fell into that?
Norm: You know what I gotta tell you right off the bat, that was a mistake.
It really should not of happened, if I would have done my Amazon research better.
I would have found out that an entry position into Amazon for basically a 10 to $12 product is not a great price point.
It killed me in Canada because I didn’t research and the Canadian fulfillment fees were 7.95 on an $11 per product.
How do you survive?
Anyways, it was a mistake.
But how do we rectify it?
So first of all, I’m big about brand brand story is everything.
Here’s the story, yeah, we were in Hawaii, my wife and I, we went to a little outlet, like an outdoor market. We checked out this soap, we thought it really was incredible, the soap artists and put together these little bars and went back and we tested it.
And it really did make your skin feel a lot nicer.
I talked to him the next day and said, “you know, this is really cool stuff, what’s the difference?”
And he was he gave me the whole spiel, right about, oh, harmful chemicals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I thought, well, maybe if I bought some of this, and I’m gonna do my own case study, gave it to all my friends when I got home, they loved it.
They really did love the product.
Okay, well, I’m in the soap business now.
So now what type of products?
Okay, so that was interesting, trying to figure out, there’s so many tools now that I didn’t have back then, like focus groups, Usability Hub, Pickfu is another good one for split testing things.
I didn’t have that.
So all I did is I bought all these scents, you know, packaged them up, and packagings everything.
Because people were paying $3 for a bar soap, why are they gonna pay, you know, 10 to $12, for mine?
The thing I didn’t think of, and this is all changing right now, we’re no longer doing one packs, is in front of my eyes the whole time, some three packs.
If I sell in a three pack, I can bring the price up over $30, then it makes complete sense.
And in fact, if I sell a three pack, it’s actually cheaper for me to send in Canada than a one pack.
I don’t know why, it’s the dimensions. But anyways, what we wanted to do is we wanted to hit just the average person, we wanted people to just feel good about themselves, or you know, relax, we recover, rejuvenate.
And we want to like our motto or tagline is, natural soap for natural people, you know, just everyday people. And it works.
Getting onto Amazon.
They’re like, we’re going through a new branding. We’re phase two on our branding, which is going to be really incredible, by the way, again, talking about perceived value.
But 45 cents worth of packaging, we’re going to be able to probably sell a bar of soap for between 10 to $15 for a bar of soap.
So anyways, I think that it was all done with an incredible brand story.
I think the brand story can live on. I think the gifting market is where we don’t concentrate on the everyday purchase.
But guess what?
It is a perfect stocking stuffer. Anybody listening, go to Soap.Club, stocking stuffers.
No, no plugs. lol
But you know, a three pack or like some of the people that come all the time for the holidays.
I don’t want to give flowers. I don’t want to give chocolates, well give soap, you know, and it could be guest soap, it could be for wife, it could be a husband, men’s grooming is big right now.
So you get the whole men side, and you have gift packs. That’s where Soap.Club is right now.
Brian: Using that as an example, how did you find your first initial customers?
Obviously you said you had tested it with friends and family. But beyond that, where do you find customers for soap?
Norm: Well, I think the initial, it’s completely changed now.
Like right now there’s a completely different approach. Back then it was just getting the organic listing up Amazon kind of put you in the middle of the pack anyways, you had a lot better chance back then.
PPC was a lot cheaper, so we could get organic sales coming from just a really great listing and through PPC and that’s how it started.
But organic like this is so important with any listing is if your list I call it The Brady Bunch effect. If you can take your images or titles or bullet points and put it against your competitors and have a focus group take a look at it or like Pick Foos, one or Usability Hub, and get them to vote if you don’t beat your competitor.
Stop doing what you’re doing and get it to a point where your images are better your titles are more engaging or whatever it is.
Today a whole different ballgame.
When I’m launching a product, I do it on content and with influencers we find our customers are converted into influencers are converted into brand ambassadors.
So we have a perpetual I mean just continuing amount of social proof. So right now, um, social proof is everything. And if we can like with one of the companies I have the one brand is over the last three months, 2,000 images, plus one day just going out to the brand ambassadors saying, “Hey, we need you to target this feature.”
Well, 30 videos came in for Amazon live.
Yeah, but that’s the power of influencers, and also doing things that other people aren’t doing. So I’m talking today now.
So PPC is one thing, you’ve got to drive other forms of external traffic.
So you can do it on Facebook, Amazon, like on Amazon posts, Amazon live. But you’re doing this a lot of the times very inexpensively through influencer networks.
Brian: Very interesting. It’s really, really cool.
Commercial Break: Most people don’t, and if not, the real question is why, and what can you do to make it as indestructible as possible?
Well, that’s the basis of my new book, 9 Ways To Amazon-Proof Your Business.
Let me talk about what we discuss in chapter six, the sixth way, which is to offer ongoing, what does that mean?
Well, what it means is don’t just have products that are one time uses, find a way to offer some type of ongoing value to your clients, even if you can’t offer it yourself.
Even if you don’t specifically offer a service that goes on and on, find someone else who does and team up with them. Find a way to turn what you do into some form of subscription or membership and get your stuff out there more often.
Allow them a chance to get to know like and trust you via a product or service. This is a way that you can completely take Amazon’s idea and twist it into something directly for your own Amazon Prime’s a major deal in the success behind amazon.com.
You can get it to work for you, even if you just work on a local level. But I also have eight other ways to Amazon proof your business, basically the idea of making it competition proof to even someone as big as Amazon.com.
So if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of my book, go to AmazonProofBook.com sign up and you will get a free copy and get the chance to purchase a physical copy of it for a special price. And now let’s get back to our show.
Brian: You’ve been in the ecommerce game for a while now.
Do you ever use any type of offline marketing to supplement what you’re doing online, or is it basically all online PPC and so forth?
Norm: Okay, so because I believe in this so much, I bought this company, but I bought a press release company.
And the reason I bought a press release company is first of all, this is beautiful. So Amazon announces that their algorithms basically all content driven, right, that’s what they love.
And what’s waited higher news, press releases.
So people abuse press releases in the past, I believe. And I’ve always seen, if you get a cheap press release, you’ll get what you pay for.
But a good quality press release gets you into so much. I can show you like there’s keywords that we’ve used, that I have in a presentation where I can show you the first full page of Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Chewy, the Four Images, like everything on the first page is us.
And then on the second page, everything is us except for two.
That’s just because we’re hitting it all the time with press release.
And we target the press release. But that’s after the fact.
We load up content onto a website. So we create an ecommerce website. We provide like five ways to xyz, we get a little snippet done.
So usually it’ll be just like a quick video that we can pay for somebody a few bucks to just read. And or if you have Animoto you can do it very inexpensively.
But you put that on YouTube, embed it into your blog article.
Now you’re going to have more on time people love that, you know, just okay, they rather watch something than read. But once it’s published, you go and read a press release about it.
And so you’re talking about maybe like five reasons why elderly dogs need bully sticks, okay, or bully sticks or health benefits. your press release says because it’s different odorless natural bulli sticks. Three keywords, provide healthy nutritional snack for elderly dogs are research shows.
And now you’ve got a newsworthy item that’s linked over to your content, which links back to Amazon. So Amazon loves it, because they want external traffic, they tell you that I want external traffic.
Well, they’re getting 300 to 400, high quality authority links from your press release.
It’s really a bonus. Google’s loving you. Amazon’s loving you.
And you know, I’m loving it, because I’m making money.
Brian: Yeah.
Norm: Oh, and the other thing…is one other thing. So a lot of online sellers forget about this part. And again, this is another reason why I bought this other division that I brought into PR reach public relations.
So public relations is basically earned media, our products, we get on to Rachael Ray, so a knife.
Okay, so Rachael Ray is using it. Or it could be on Dr. Phil, or could be in Dr. Oz, it could be Rachel, or it could be Wendy Williams.
It could be on we just had this two weeks ago, the today’s show, you know, so it’s getting tons of exposure, or getting put into mainstream magazines for free.
That gives you a ton of exposure, which your average Amazon seller will never get in their lifetime.
Brian: Fabulous. That’s great. That’s amazing information there, you do so many things. You have so many businesses, you’re a speaker, you’re a coach out of everything that you’re doing right now.
Would you say there’s there’s any one of them that you like the best what industry or business right now are you most interested in?
Norm: It’s probably the one that has the most potential, like I have a company called the chat agency. And it works primarily with Amazon, but could be any ecommerce company.
It’s a way that you can launch rank and maintain that rank over time, while building influencer and brand ambassadors. So as for me, I feel that it’s the only way as long as you have a 40% profit margin to actually break even, or launch your product profitably.
There’s no other company out there.
This is a patent pending process and I think that it’s brand new, we’re talking about three or four months old, in the past, you would have to give rebates away full purchase product, every time you gave away a product, you’re losing money.
I don’t like to lose, but you’re losing money. This way, I give away a product or the way the system is set up. I’m making money that I’m excited about that.
Also, I’ve got a couple of podcasts, this is all COVID projects.
One is for Amazon, which I love you know, Amazon or online eCommerce.
But the one that really, I’m having a lot of fun with is the I Know This Guy Podcast.
So the little thing behind me…but it’s just about really incredible, don’t have to be successful. They just have to be incredible people.
Some people have no idea who they are. Other people know, like, I can’t believe some of the people that are on.
But these are people that have had incredible backstory that are that have failed miserably. Tell and not worried about telling people that they failed or had these major obstacles, and they’re not sitting in front of a Lamborghini waving their money is that it wasn’t luck, that they lived through hell, this is how they did it. This is how they bounce back.
This is what they learned, and then it goes on to talk about success.
I think that’s where I’m at, I’m just having a blast because I get to talk to these people, you know, and this and I’m learning so much from them.
Brian: We’ll definitely include links to your podcasts and our description. So you guys can go and check that out.
If we were looking at ecommerce or an Amazon specifically, if you could change one thing about that space, what would it be?
Norm: Amazon’s idiotic customer service.
Yeah, I like for people to know that if they are undercapitalized, don’t attempt to get into the business. That is probably the highest percentage and that’s the reason why people fail. You’re gonna have a home run, you’re under capitalized.
Or if you’re, if it’s your last dollar, don’t do it.
Just wait a year do whatever, there’ll be something else, you know Amazon’s gonna not going anywhere or all these other other platforms, they’re not going anywhere, save your money. That’s it.
And also, you can’t know everything, but you should know a little bit.
So always try to constantly learn something I, I know, for my team, we’ve got a program where we buy anything for them.
So you want a training program, we buy it, your responsibility is one hour a day, at the end of the week, you tell us what you’ve learned and how we can apply it to our business. That’s probably what I would talk about.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. If we were to get back together, say, like, in a year, and we were to bring you back on the show, and look back over the past 12 months, and everything that you had done, what would you have need to have done to feel confident and happy with your progress a year from now?
Norm: I’m probably thinking on the podcast side anyways, that we get some of the system’s down better.
So it really is quite an arduous task to go out there. And, you know, either find or be guests, you know, you know, the same, you know, it’s really podcast promotion, there’s so many out there right now, it’s tough to do.
I would love to see where the chat agencies gonna be.
I think that people are going to realize that, and this is a big hurdle if you if you want hurdles, and what we have to overcome. And if we can do it, this is a big one, many chat or these chat flows, people do them wrong.
People do them bad people don’t understand them. So what happens is, you get this really crappy name.
Like if you were really good in social media, SEO, and you’ve got all these people that are giving you 10 year technology are crap or link junk links.
And, you know, it’s the same thing with chatbots, you’ve got all these people that have taken a course that know nothing, you know, nothing about the the Facebook Terms of Service gives everybody a bad name.
So now, that’s what we have to overcome, if I can, or if we can overcome that, then it’s going to be a really great company. And I’d really like to see where that goes. The other thing is, video.
So video and Amazon and video are going to go hand in hand, they’re going to it’s going to be massive, as well as seeing where Amazon goes.
If we can come over the hurdle of posting regularly, building up Amazon live and building that whole brand story to become a real brand or micro brand on Amazon.
That’s what I want to be able to do.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. Can’t wait to see how things go on that. out of everything that I’ve talked with you here today.
What question would you like to answer that, I haven’t asked you?
Norm: How long did it take to grow my beard?
Brian: There you go.
Norm: Yeah, that is it should have been about three years. It’s taken a lot longer because I burnt it off making hamburgers.
Brian: Oh, wow.
Norm: Flame caught it, just yeah, I pulled the Michael Jackson. I mean, it just went up, but and went up stupidly to because it was kind of like Yosemite Sam right up in the middle.
Oh, no.
That was my question. If you want something business wise education, what type of knowledge should you have before going into Amazon or e commerce?
My answer is that there’s so many people that I see that aren’t properly educated, or they try to do it free. They try to just go onto YouTube and watch three or four year old information that is wrong. Also, they watch too many.
So you’ve got all these self proclaimed gurus that are out there giving you different types of information about the same thing that could easily give you the same.
So the same results, but now you got 10 people working out your head. Just follow one or follow to so take a course. You know make sure you take a course is lots out there. Helium 10s freedom ticket they’ve got ASM is a good one.
That’s their amazing, calm now. There’s a bunch out there. But just make sure you take a course invest in your future, constantly learn and probably the most important thing, join a mastermind.
A lot of masterminds are free. Others you pay for you know, it could be 50 bucks, it could be 300 bucks, it could be higher. Again, it’s it’s probably you get what you pay for. S
o if I’m able to go into a mastermind and say, Hey, I got this problem and get it solved within a minute as a good mastermind So those are probably the things just knowledge and education for Amazon is everything. Also, because it’s just so big.
Brian: Fabulous, really great to hear.
We can we can keep going with you, Norman. Really some amazing stuff.
I mean, there’s so much here that I’ve written down personally that I gotta go back and relisten to this, and then hear what you had to say on it, because it’s really great info.
What could listeners do who want to find out more about you, and everything that you provide?
Norm: Well, probably the easiest thing.
Yeah, this is complete narcissism, but it’s I just go to NormFarrar.com. And that has everything there.
It has the podcast, the different companies, and hopefully I bought NormFarrar.com about a month ago. I hopefully it’s gonna point over to NormanFarrar.com, but that’s where you get all the information.
You know, it has all their social media. We are on Kelsey Farrar, my son does a lot of the social media, and he does a great job with repurposing stuff. So we’re all over the place.
Brian: Oh, that’s great.
It’s great that you got your family all involved and everything.
I can tell you, you know, this kind of learning from your father and everything else and kind of building out that, that entrepreneurial spirit, that’s really the coolest thing in the world.
Norm: I’m really happy that I’ve got two of my sons.
I’ve got three boys, but two of them is is a COVID blessing, decided that they weren’t doing what they were doing, and they were coming back.
They stayed here and they ended up, you know, being part of the company, which was completely a surprise because I always thought they thought what I did sucked.
Brian: That’s great. That crazy situations 2020 it pulled everything together for you, that’s awesome.
Well, hey, Norman Farrar, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, mentor. Thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Norm: It has been my pleasure.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: That was a really great conversation we had with Norman there.
There’s so many pieces here that I think you’d missed. If you only listen to this. Once I know I mentioned it during the show. You weren’t taking notes the first time you should listen to it again and catch some of this stuff.
Starting right off the bat where he’s discussing controlling communication was a huge piece, all throughout about the importance of packaging, and how that can matter to the overall price and how it can matter to how things get bought or how they get shipped.
That’s huge. That’s makes a huge difference regardless of whether you’re working with Amazon or not.
These are issues that everybody that is working in the world of e commerce needs to be familiar with. Included in that is how to take control over an industry that has no control. I mean, I love when he went into that and and how do you fix a broken product business?
If it’s broken from the bottom up if you went into it with the wrong idea?
Where do you go from there, all the little pieces that he mentioned about e commerce and the power of press releases, at the very end him discussing using a mastermind.
These are all really high quality comments that he’s making and some great resources that he’s pointed us to once again recommend you re listen to this I recommend that you follow through on some of these ideas.
I think it’ll be very useful to your business.
This is honestly one of those conversations that I think should be for sale because there’s so much good information in it and I’m happy you can join me in my conversation with Norman here on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.
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Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas. I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.