David Gilmore – LDS Prepper

Posted on March 27, 2022March 27, 2022 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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David Gilmore, known as the LDS Prepper on YouTube. Posted his first video 10 years ago.

He was inspired by other YouTube prepper channels and wanted to share what he was doing and learning on his journey and preparedness.

Today his channel has over 210,000 subscribers and over 44 million video views.

Please checkout his quality videos and products at his website and YouTube channel, linked below!

Website – https://ldsprepperstore.com/

Youtube Channel – LDSPrepper

Show Notes

How LDS Prepper Got Started
A Passion for Helping People Be Prepared
Value of Building Rapport With Your Customers
“Once You Educate Customers, Your Going To Get Sales”
Knowing Where Your Customers Congregate – Online / Offline
Top Seller – LDS Prepper Premium Micro-Nutrient Mix
Mittleider Gardening Course Book
What I Like About Having an Online Business in the Prepping Industry
Continued Education and Growth for Sustainability is Needed Around The World
Personal & Business Goals For The Next Year
Other People’s Traffic: Tips for Growing Your Online Youtube Channel / Business

Transcription

David: I found that really I can ship anywhere in the world. And I do so I need to make myself available to the world.

So I started on YouTube.

And then when I make a YouTube video I also put a link on my Facebook profile because I’ve got 5,000 friends, okay, I’ve never met. But however, they feel like they know me because they’ve watched the videos right?

They say this all the time, I feel like I know you, I’ve watched 300 of your videos.

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: David Gilmore, known as the LDS Prepper on YouTube. Posted his first video 10 years ago.

He was inspired by other YouTube prepper channels and wanted to share what he was doing and learning on his journey and preparedness.

Today his channel has over 192,000 subscribers and over 42 million video views.

He has become a true YouTube influencer. His passion has turned from a hobby to a seven figure a year business as an affiliate for preparedness products and producer of his own product. Today he shares his insights with us on how to start an online business with zero capital zero risk and a mobile phone.

David Gilmore, welcome to the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

David: Thank you Brian. Glad to be here.

Brian: Yeah, I really appreciate it.

How did you end up at this point?

How did the whole journey start with you, David?

David: Great question.

I’m really a visual learner. My wife reads lots of books, her nightstand is piled with books and she just goes through the books. And I get to watch a video I get it.

I gotta see physically. Instead of me googling things for answers, I go to YouTube.

I call it YouTube University. And it really helped me out and I am preparedness-minded.

I feel it’s my responsibility as a father and as a husband to provide and protect. I was always looking for solutions and YouTube just seemed like a great place to do that, and I appreciate what others put up.

So I thought, well, maybe I should share some of the things that I’m doing.

First of all, had to come up with a YouTube name.

And I thought okay, well, you know, there’s like New York Prepper and there’s a Southern Prepper, and there’s Texas Prepper.

So how would I identify myself something that would reflect who I am?

And first and foremost, I’m a Christian, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

So the abbreviation for that is LDS.

And then I’m a provider and protector, and I’m a prepper.

So I just made it LDS Prepper.

So that’s my YouTube channel. And then I bought the domain, LDSPrepper.com, and I just had that foreword to my YouTube channel, I get that created.

Then I had to come up with a logo for the channel.

I thought the best prepper in the world was Noah. So I found a nice image of Noah and the ark, and the rainbow, which is God’s covenant with Noah that he would never flood the earth again.

I created that YouTube channel and then started just making videos of what I was doing.

I posted my first video, I remember this clearly. And I kept refreshing the page to see if anybody was watching it or if anybody subscribed, and I get like one or two subscribers and a couple of views.

Then the next day posted another video and I got two or three views.

Then I posted my third video, and I got to three more subscribers.

Then all sudden I refresh the screen and I had 100 subscribers. And then I came back and refresh the screen and I had two hundred subscribers. I thought, what is going on?

One of the YouTubers that I followed, who’s has a prepper channel had put up a video saying hey, you should go check out this guy’s YouTube channel.

That’s kind of how it all started networking without me knowing that I was networking but somebody else had found my content. That was great.

So I just started sharing that and being videos about being self reliant and so forth.

I just really think it’s a porn to put up really good quality content. I had someone talking to me a couple of weeks ago and they want to be a YouTuber.

They were talking about they need to go to university and take courses on video editing and then they need to buy this $5,000 camera and audio.

I said, No, it’s all about the content.

They really don’t care what the video quality is, as long as it’s visual, it’s the content, does solve a problem?

And so that’s what I really focus on is, what problems am I solving and I then I just video it and put it on my channel.

I really think that high-quality content is the key. That really solves a problem because when people go to YouTube, they’re typing in how-to, and then whatever they’re searching for.

So I was just sharing what I was doing. And I was never on camera.

So it wasn’t about me being on camera, it was more about the message.

I just literally had my camera in my hands. I couldn’t be on camera and that was just filming what I was talking about. So that’s pretty much how I got to where I am I just started posting content, people liked the content. I was interactive with them.

So they post a question or comment, and I always reply.

Even though I wasn’t there and taking, you know, taking personal calls, it was kind of a communication. So it worked out well.

People liked the content, I spent a lot of time editing to make sure that I get rid of all the arms and butts and things like that, that happen when you video and it was just grabbing my cell phone and making recording.

So it worked out well.

Brian: Fabulous. It’s a great way of describing the process.

At what point did you start adding the business elements into it?

David: This is a passion, my passion is to help people get prepared to learn how to grow food as if their life depends on it. Because I really think it will, to my core, I think it will to have clean water more people die every day on the globe from dirty water than everything else combined.

I have videos on that, that have over a million views. And those are about water filtration and how to pick the right water filter and so forth.

What happened was I started getting all these subscribers and all these views. Then I get an email from Google saying, hey, we’d like to put ads on your channel, that okay, well, that’s fine.

So I have the ads on there. But then I’m recommending things that I’m buying and using because I don’t recommend anything unless I personally use it and like it, and then would recommend it.

I’m just putting links on to for other websites, and Amazon and so forth.

Then I thought, Well, why don’t I just become an affiliate?

And so then I became an Amazon affiliate, then I would contact SUN OVEN or the Berkey Water Filter company or whatever. And well, Texas Ready Seeds, right.

Lucinda, right.

So I’m an affiliate for them, I’m getting able to get the best pricing as an affiliate or an authorized dealer, like with Berkey and pass that on to my customers.

That’s how I turn a passion turned into a business is becoming an affiliate. The advantage of being an affiliate is I don’t have to inventory it, don’t have to spend money on inventory. I don’t have to ship it. I don’t take customer calls.

You know, the vendor does all that.

So it worked out great for me, I’ve been doing it been doing this for 10 years.

Well, you can see in my office here in my house on a laptop, and a mobile phone. That’s pretty much my business.

Brian: That’s great. And that’s a really great tip for people that are just starting out and finding ways to be able to keep everything nice and tight and simple, is really the way to go. That’s fabulous.

So you start your YouTube channel, you start getting the business element of it going, at what point did you build yourself a website and and start doing things off of YouTube?

David: That’s a great question.

So I was just referring people to other products, you know, affiliate links, and so forth.

And then I wanted to be able to build a customer list.

If I’m just sending him into Amazon, Amazon’s getting the list, or I’m sending him to some other site they’re getting lists, and I’m not getting a list.

I can’t build that rapport with him or updated with information.

What I started to do was I said, All right, if you want these things, I’m an authorized dealer, just call me on the phone.

Well, that got a little bit of overwhelming.

And I said, All right, so just send me an email.

So now I’m having to do take all these orders and process and send them an invoice.

And so that was just nuts, you just can’t do that because this was just a passion, not a business.

I still was running a business and then I set up a kind of an off brand online store, which was really, I mean, the people were really good, but it was a lot more work than having a Shopify store.

So last year, so I’ve been doing this for 10 years.

Last year, I opened up my Shopify store, and what a difference I would just tell people just go to Shopify, okay, just go to a platform there. You can come, if you don’t know how to do something, you can go to Fiverr and get somebody for $15 to fix it for you or you can go to YouTube and look at the video on how to set up shipping or something like that.

So I set up the Shopify store and put all the products on there and that really made a big difference. Because that platform sooner somebody places an order, they get a confirmation email, when I ship it, they get a confirmation email, when I get the tracking number, they get that email.

Just really good communication.

And I have my personal cell phone number on my website. I’m the one who answers the calls. I don’t have employees answer call. It’s, you know, they have a question I take the call.

They have questions about herbs, I hand the home that my phone to my wife, because she has written five books on herbs. So having the storefront really made having an online store really made a difference. And I don’t have a storefront.

This is all virtual business.

Brian: Hmm.

David: Which is great, because now I’m a pretty big influencer in the preparedness industry market niche. And so I’m asked all the time, I was asked last week, will you come to Boise and do a presentation?

I said no, because there’s going to be 30 or 100 or 150 people there.

I could take that five hours or six hours and reach 30 million people.

Brian: Yeah.

David: Or, you know, I’ve got 192,000 subscribers. And when my wife and I did a video live this last Saturday, we had 2,300 people live on that video, I can’t fit that many people in the library or whatever’s happening.

So I really put everything that I would do in a seminar on my YouTube channel, and then people can watch them at their leisure, they can watch them at 2x speed right now.

But then I’m able to reach people all over the world.

So I was just checking my Shopify stats, and I am shipping to the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Puerto Rico, Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Italy, South Africa, Mexico, Ireland, India, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Israel, Philippines, Denmark, Norway, and on and on and on.

I couldn’t do that in a seminar.

But I’ve done lots of seminars and lots of preparedness fairs.

That’s a great way to really hone your message, it’s a great way to make a lot of sales really quickly.

As a tip, this is a really big tip, because I was invited to a lot of preparedness fairs.

And we would always pay for a booth or they would provide a booth, if you’re going to do a trade show or something like that. This is what made us the top vendors at all the trade shows and that is we would always get a 10 by 20 booth, then in 10 feet of that, we would set up chairs and a projector and we’d have a class every hour.

Once we educated the people on the product, whether it’s portable solar generator, or self-defense training, or how to grow garden as your if your life depends on how to pick a water filter.

Once you educate the people on that, you’re going to get sales.

Instead of just standing data booth like we normally do and waiting for people to walk by, you know, we’ve all experienced that set up a schedule.

The whole purpose of us standing at the booth was, hey, in an hour, we’re going to have this class, here’s this class schedule, we would hand out that sheet.

We were packed, and the vendors around us started to seeing what we were doing. And then we go to the next event. And they then they had a 10 by 20.

Booth, as we were just clearing out of everything that we could bring to you know, fit in our trucks to bring to the show, they’re taking everything back home. When they started educating then they were selling all their products.

And so really, really big tip take the time to educate people. That’s what we’re all about. Right is helping, and they will appreciate it. They will trust you. And then they will buy your product because that solves their problem.

Brian: Yeah, that’s amazing advice. That’s really good stuff there.

People I really advise you to go re listen to a lot of just even just what David said, just right there. It’s so valuable.

You talk about starting out on YouTube, and bringing in people that way and it’s still your top area, right, where people are finding you from. And you’ve done stuff in person, like you said at the shows and so forth.

Is there any other place that you found new customers from?

David: Primarily, I found that really I can ship anywhere in the world?

I do so I need to make myself available to the world.

So I started on YouTube, and then when I make a YouTube video I also put a link on my face Facebook profile, because I’ve got 5,000 friends, okay, I’ve never met.

But however, they feel like they know me because they’ve watched the videos.

So there’s really, they say this all the time, I feel like I know you guys watch 300 of your videos. And then, you know you’ve got Rumble or you got these other outlets.

So just think about where do I watch videos?

Where can I put my content?

Because I found that the Facebook group is not the YouTube group.

It’s a completely separate market.

I mean, there’s really very little overlap.

And people on Facebook say, Oh, I don’t want to YouTube and people on YouTube that I would never use Facebook for just think about how many different areas that you can access.

Here’s the key.

You know, we’ve always heard what’s it called?

Other People’s Money, right?

Brian: Yeah, yeah.

David: Okay. No. Other People’s Audience.

Brian: Oh, yeah.

David: Other People’s Audience.

I didn’t have to build an audience. I just went to where the audience was.

And so I started asking myself, I’m a fisherman. I love fishing for salmon. And so my question is, first question of a fisherman is where are the fish?

So you want to fish, where the fish are?

If the fish are on YouTube, then go to YouTube.

If the fish are on Facebook, then go to Facebook.

If the fish are on, you know, wherever, then that’s where you put your content.

And so use other people’s audience.

What is that OPA?

Brian: OPA, Yeah, yeah.

David: And it doesn’t cost you anything. I’m doing all of this at zero advertising cost, literally, without with a mobile phone that I already own and zero advertising, advertising costs. I’m reaching millions of people. Doesn’t cost me a penny.

Brian: Yeah, that’s great, great advice there.

And it’s so interesting watching your YouTube videos, you cover such a wide array of prepping, you know, everything from from gardening to water filtration, everything that you’ve mentioned, what is your top selling product right now?

David: Great question.

By far, it is the product that I manufacture and source myself and that is the LDS Premium Micronutrient Plant Food Mix. And so I’m just looking at my stats here on my Shopify store.

So that is the number one product.

The second is Mittleider Gardening Course Book, which teaches people how to grow food as if the life depends on it.

So in that book, you’ll learn the six laws of plant growth.

And one of those six laws is nutrition.

The micronutrient mix that I make, and source myself and ship is the number one selling product for sure. So I’m looking at the stats here, top product is by far is the micronutrient mix.

What led you to put that together, there was only one source for it on the planet. And I thought I’m trying to teach the world how to grow food.

There’s only one source. And so I thought the recipe to make this is actually in the $25 book, as I’m shipping this book around the world, as I mentioned earlier. And I’m talking to these people, I say, see if you can source this yourself and provide it for Mangolia or the UK or Canada.

So they’re not paying these crazy shipping costs from United States. I’m not in you know, the Lord has provided me enough income that can do what I want.

I don’t need to do this for a living.

I’m doing seven figures a year, so it’s doing well. But if somebody else can do it in Canada, I’d rather have them do it in Canada and make it more affordable, more available to them.

So I’m literally just trying to share that recipe with everybody and make it so it’s not just one source.

So now there are a lot of people doing this and selling it. And so that make it more available for everybody.

That goal of me making more available to everybody by getting the word out as been very rewarding. So I see I’m building my competition, per se.

Because I’m encouraging people to do this themselves. But I feel very gratified in doing that. Because I know I’m helping people grow their own food.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. That’s a great story in the end.

You know, you mentioned books, you mentioned having that book and the and I think you said your your wife had some books on herbs. That how has having having books available.

How has that made a difference in your business?

David: Well, my wife is a Master Gardener Certified Master Gardener.

She’s a Master Herbalist.

She’s a master medical herbalist, and so forth.

As a master gardener, she had over $1,000 worth of gardening books. I mean, she had a library shelves full of gardening books.

Then when we moved from Texas to Idaho, she had me take all those books and take them to Goodwill. And she kept the one $25 book, which is the Mittleider Gardening Course book. Because everything she needs to know was in that $25 book.

She literally donated over $1,000 worth of gardening books.

So having the book on hand, here’s mine. I mean, I obviously can’t see it on a podcast, but I keep it right here by my chair because I refer to it all the time, every word of that book 1,000 and 1,000s of times.

When people call me, they’ll say, David, I’m on page 165, can you help me with this, and then I turned to my book.

Having a book on hand as really, really important. You can get it in a digital form, or you can get a physical form, I would highly recommend regardless what the shipping costs get in physical form, it cost you way more than to print it out in a digital form.

And it’s just much easier for me.

Instead of having to boot up my computer and load a digital, I do have the digital format, but I never use it. I always grabbed the printed book.

And then my wife has taken her years of experience and certification and made reference manuals for medicinal weeds and culinary herbs, and how to grow your own herbs and how to make your own tinctures and so forth.

She actually made those reference manuals for herself. And then people kept asking her for them.

Basically, she was solving a problem for herself, she found that other people had the same problem.

Now she sends it to a printer and hasn’t printed and we ship them all over the world. Having a reference manual, having a book on hand, I think is critical.

I can’t answer every question 24 hours a day, having a book on hand really makes a big difference. They can refer to that whenever they want. So having a book significant, I think very, very important.

Brian: Especially in the field you’re working in, which is all how to, you know, so they’ve got to have more than the just you there. Then obviously they’ve got hours and hours and days worth of video that they can go through but having yeah, having a physical book that makes big difference.

Commercial Break: Okay, let’s take a break from that conversation. I wanted to bring up a question for you, during these crazy times, do you feel like your business is indestructible?

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: Overall, what do you like best about your business or your industry?

David: As I was preparing for this and listening to other podcasts. One of the things that you ask is, you know, what is it you do?

So I had to ask myself, what is it I do?

Because when I talk to people, they say, Well what do you do for a living?

So I just became a pilot or I’m going through the process of becoming one I just bought a gyro plane. And so I now I have a new audience, you know, circle of people physically that I go down into the airport with an error in their, in their group and so forth.

As you get to know each other you date, well what do you do?

And I say and I typically say Well, I’m a marketer, I have a marketing company because I do do advertising for other people. But that is completely aside from what I do online.

Or they’ll tell them and they go, Okay, well that’s interesting.

Really, when I thought about it. I’m really not a marketer, even though I do some marketing for other people, but I’m really an affiliate marketer because I’m really marketing, most of stuff, I mark it or is from other people.

I mean, we do have my wife’s books, and we do have the micronutrients that I make, but everything else is an affiliate product.

The thing I like about the business model is that I don’t have to inventory, I don’t have to pay for inventory, I don’t have to ship it on customer service calls.

I can’t imagine if I had all those products here, I don’t have a storefront. That means I’m not sitting on a stool somewhere waiting for someone to come in. And I’m taking care of, you know, 50 customers a day, or I’m here, I’m taking care of 1000s of customers a day.

Our orders have, I just looking at it earlier, gone up tenfold from this time last year.

We’re doing 10 times the amount of volume as sales that we were doing last year, this at the same time. And so we’ve already significantly increased.

I think it’s because people are now realizing, Hey, maybe I need I need to grow food as if my life depends on it. And I really don’t know how to do that.

I need kind of a step by step way to do that. And that’s where the Mittleider Gardening Course comes in.

Or maybe my I already have an existing garden, but my garden isn’t really doing very well. It’s not producing well. So maybe I need to get these micronutrient mixes.

What I like about the business, the industry is that first of all, it’s online.

I’m an entrepreneur, which means I’m, I’m willing to work twice as hard for half the amount of money, right?

That’s what definition runners, my days are very, very long, because I’m passionate. And if I weren’t passionate, if this was just about money, I’d stopped this years ago, because I get so many emails a day, and so many phone calls and so many texts saying thank you so much I love you and your wife, you don’t know how you’ve helped our family.

That’s what I love about the business the most that I’m really making a big difference in people’s lives, literally, and helping them provide and protect for the family that I probably couldn’t do if I were just selling, you know, Android accessories, which is fine.

But I certainly wouldn’t be working as hard at that as I am providing the service and products that I that I do now.

So I love that it’s online. I love that I get calls, people say you’re crazy to get calls, I’m helping another human being.

When I get done with that call, I say now the reason why I took this 20 minutes with you this 45 minutes with you is so that you can go help to other people.

You don’t want to be the only one in your neighborhood growing food, you want a community around you growing food, you want a community around you that has portable solar power.

So I’m trying to educate everybody and I’m having to do that on the phone with one person at a time. But on the internet I can do for 1000s of people’s time. So I like that I love YouTube as a platform as a critical part of my business.

Because I’m able to reach so many people at the same time, where I just couldn’t, wouldn’t be enough hours in a day for me to do that one on one. So I love that I love that it’s online, they don’t have stacks of inventory.

I do have a lot of micronutrients in my garage, because I’m literally literally bringing them in sourcing him mixing him.

I’m looking at my security camera here that my employee bagging all the micronutrients right now and it’s in my garage.

So we’re building a 40 by 60 building where we can have a processing and shipping something that’s where I can get my truck in my garage for once. Right?

Brian: Yeah.

David: So it’s exciting. I love that I’m helping people, and I’m able to do it worldwide. I’m helping a lot of people all over. And that’s very gratifying when I go to bed at night.

I know that I’ve helped a lot of people. And I’m not just making money, I’m actually making a difference.

Brian: Hmm. That’s incredible.

So on the flip side, if you could change just one thing about your business, or your industry as a whole, what would it be?

David: Well, I wish there were 1000 people blowing this trumpet on, you know how to grow food.

I’m trying to get there are two Master Mittleider Gardening instructors on the planet. And I’m one of them.

Well, there needs to be 200,000, Master Mittleider Gardening Instructors all over the world. And I’m just trying to get the message out so that everybody can teach somebody else.

So if I could change that, that there would be more people who really are confident in the system and know how to do that.

What I need to change is I need to get a shipping manager because I’m spending so much time in the paperwork processing, you know, tracking you entering tracking numbers and all that interferes with me able to take the time to put up new content.

It interferes with me working on my groundschool for my pilot license. You know money is simply a tool right? That’s right.

If I’m using it correctly, it provides me time and resources for the things that are important. Money isn’t important, but it provides things that are important. So I need more time, I can’t get more time.

So I, that’s why I’m hiring people.

And I need to do the bagging my themselves, I sourced everything, making sure that I get the best quality products, and it’s the right mixture and so forth. But then I can hire my neighborhood kids, and they can bag, right.

So I’m giving them an opportunity to make some money during the summer. But I need to have somebody manage the shipping. It’s hard when you’re one man show.

My wife has these resource manuals, and she’s assembling them herself. That just takes up hundreds of hours to put all those papers together in a binder and in the paper protectors.

I think a hard part about businesses at some point, you need to kind of let go a little bit and say, All right, I need someone else to do this. I’m providing them an income and providing myself more freedom to do other other things.

So I would change that I would build the building. So I can get my car, my truck in my garage, and I would get someone to manage the business more. I never thought 10 years ago, that I’d be where I am today.

At basically zero overhead cost.

Because it’s all free advertising on YouTube as a free platform. And it’s I don’t know, what is $50 a month for Shopify or less?

I don’t I don’t know what it is. But anyway, I would I need to work more on managing gets other people taking care of the day to day things. So I can do less of that.

So long answer.

Brian: Oh that’s great. No, no. It’s it’s a complicated issue.

And when you’re getting to the point where you’re at.

David: Yeah.

I think a lot of business owners start out as a one man shop. And then at some point, they have to realize, Hey, I’ve got to kind of let go of the reins a little bit. Because this is provide a solution for other people.

But now it’s inhibiting me on what I need to be doing in my personal life. And so, yeah, let’s turn this over and may not be as perfect or as good as you right?

It gets the job done and if you’re got a good quality control in place, and the customers happy.

Brian: Absolutely.

And if you can reach more people by doing that, or at least keep your own sanity, which is necessary to be able to continue doing what you do. That’s all worth it.

David: Yeah, I’ve got six videos that I’ve already recorded that I haven’t edited and uploaded yet, because I’m too busy during the day to day stuff.

Brian: Yeah.

David: And that defeats the purpose of me doing what I’m doing. Yes, I’m caught up in the day to day I can’t get more content out.

Brian:‘Yeah, that’s a that’s a common frustration I’ve heard that from a lot of growing, especially online, e-commerce businesses.

David, if we were to talk again, let’s say a year from now, and we were to look back over the last 12 months, what would you say would have had to happen for you to feel happy with your progress both professionally and personally?

David: Id have my private pilot license, I’d be spending at least 10 hours a week flying with my wife and seeing the sights here and God’s great planet. I’d have a production manager or shipping manager in place who could take care of that, I’d be providing an income for them.

I’d have the building built so that the business is running without me being involved in business, if I left for a week to go to somewhere on vacation, or we’re just flying around doing a cross country trip in the gyroplane. And everything was managed without me, I feel good about that.

Because at some point, it would be great if I could just do content.

If I could just spend the time putting out more information helping more people in a personal matter. You know, I wear headset Bluetooth headset all day long, because people are calling me but I’m busy with my hands while I’m talking to them on the phone.

If I could just be focused with them on the phone instead of trying to manage the business, that’d be better.

So I think I know what I need to do. And we’re in the process of doing those things.

So in a year from now, I think we’ll be in a much better position personally and in business.

Brian: That sounds exciting because you know where you want to go. You have a really good idea about how to get there the obstacles that are standing your way.

So that’s that’s really great.

What advice would you have blanket advice besides all the great advice you’ve already provided, but for a business owner that’s out there that’s looking to get started in a similar fashion than you have, what blanket advice would you have for the business owners out there listening?

David: First of all would be used other people’s traffic. So if you’ve got a brick and mortar store, you can still share what you’re doing on other people’s traffic.

Now is that a bonus and bored at a church or a bus station. That’s other people’s traffic, right? It doesn’t cost you anything.

You don’t have to pay for advertising, you really don’t have to pay for advertising. Just think about where people congregating online or offline, and then you just use that space.

All right, that’d be the first thing I recommend is use free traffic sources.

I started out by doing search engine optimization 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and that whole game has changed.

There’s no such thing as free traffic with alright, is not there anymore. That’s a lot a lot of work.

My son does SEO for his his business. He has an online business too. And he’s decided to go that route. And I’m doing YouTube. And he’s saying what I’m doing so now he has a YouTube channel is doing very well on YouTube, too.

Because it’s literally unlimited traffic.

People are looking for a solution, you provide a solution. So find first recommendation is find some free traffic.

And you probably already just think, Where did where do I go?

Okay, where were you know, that’s where I would have to I would market have a product that solves a problem.

Just address the problem in, you know, people don’t care what the cost is, if it really solves their problem, right?

If you need a kidney transplant, are you worried about the cost?

Probably not. Okay, if you need to grow food as if your life depends on it, you’re probably not too worried about the cost.

Be sitting, you know, be reasonable with the cost, but have a product that solves a problem and then help people find the product. But what I found is that with my business, that content is king, you need to have good honest, direct content.

On my videos, I share everything, the failures, the successes, okay?

Be honest, be genuine, be you don’t be phony.

I have a video series where I went off grid for seven days, no water, turn off the water, turn off the gas, turn off the electricity. And it was a complete nightmare.

This great prepper guy, it was a horrible, it was taking cold showers and screaming like a little girl, it was is that the solar panels rent, the battery bank ran out of power within 24 hours. All this stuff that happened and it was it’s on video.

And it’s like this is real, okay, if you don’t do this yourself, you’re going to run into the same problem, you’ve got to practice yourself and this is what happened to me.

I’m supposed to be the quote unquote, “expert” right?

So be real, be genuine, be yourself. Don’t try to be somebody else.

And see, if you’re going to be marketing on YouTube is a great tip, what I would do, because I didn’t know anything about marketing on YouTube, when you make a video before you post a video.

If it’s about growing tomatoes, whatever it is, puppy dog collars, whatever the product is, do a search and find out what other videos are out there.

What are the titles of those videos, because those videos are popping up because of the algorithm.

So you can take a look at the titles of the other videos, incorporate those words into your title. And now all sudden, your video shows up in the recommended videos list because you use the algorithm because you’re using the same words that other people are using.

So I would recommend that.

Another really big tip if you’re marketing online at all, make sure that you’re using the full URL in the description.

So https colon slash slash, I see a lot of people just putting in like LDSPrepperStore.com.

But that isn’t a hyperlink without will make it live on slash slash, okay, it doesn’t work, people aren’t going to want to copy it and paste it and know it just make sure you have the full URL out there.

And then I would also say unfortunately, from experience that you need to brand your product you need to brand your videos.

I have a now a brand on all my videos because people take the content and use it on for themselves. I’ve seen it on TV, I’ve literally seen my YouTube content on three letter alphabet TV stations, okay?

And never asked for the content. Never want, you know, gave me compensation for the content never mentioned me in the content but used my content.

So make sure that you you put a brand logo on your content out there that most of all, just find a passion. If you’re passionate about quilting, then just start putting content out there.

Quilting is a multi million or billion dollar industry and you know who would have known quilting, or whatever it is right?

Just put it out there.

If you’re passionate about it, you will enjoy every minute that you quote unquote work at it. And you know, it’s very rewarding and you help other people find solutions to their problems.

So be passionate about it.

Use other people’s traffic, make sure you brand it. If you’re marketing on YouTube, make sure you’re using other people’s words that other people using in their title.

So get your videos get found and you will climb very, very quickly on the scale of visibility and subscribers and sales at all at no cost.

Brian: Excellent. That is some amazing information there.

Is there anything, any question I did not ask you, David that you’d like to answer?

David: No, you’re excellent host you have great questions.

That’s really, if they want to find more information about my videos, they can just go to LDSPrepper.com.

And my store is LDSPrepperStore.com. If they want to call me my phone number is on my store. And I’m glad to help them with any items they have about preparedness questions, anything I can do to help.

I just kind of feel as we come closer to when the Lord comes back and rains on the earth things are kind of compounding. And I just think the sooner we’re prepared, the better. I’m hear as a resource in any way.

I feel like I’m doing the Lord’s work and he’s taking care of me. So I’m healthy, I’m strong, we have the finances we need. We’re providing other people solutions to their problems. So it’s a great place to be.

Brian: David Gilmore, thanks so much. You’ve definitely been a resource for us here today, the LDS Prepper folks, go and check them out.

David Gilmore, thanks so much for being on the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

David: Thank you very much Brian.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Well, I’m not really sure where to begin.

That was a really good conversation, especially on the business end of things. Quite oftentimes people come in, and they have a very clear understanding about what it is that they do, but not always the clearest understanding of how they went about doing it and why.

And that’s common, that’s not unusual, even at the higher levels.

I’ve heard Richard Branson discuss business. And he has a very difficult time talking about how he did it, or the principles behind it.

He just kind of moved, and things just kind of happened.

And every once in a while he’ll say something that’s profound, but it’s quite accidental.

He actually talks about how the fact that he doesn’t really know how he went about doing things.

I think it’s pretty common for people in the business journey to just kind of move. And every once in a while, you’ll have somebody that can do that very successfully, without having a lot of the major issues that most business owners face.

But most of us face those issues, we face these obstacles that you come up against, and wonder how to get around and through it.

If you don’t have a mentor, if you don’t have a group of people that you depend on, if you don’t have people that can help you sort those things out. Especially if you’re a first generation entrepreneur, it’s difficult to switch your mindset over from the way that most people think into the way a successful business person thinks.

I say all that to say that David has a really solid foundation for how successful business owners think.

There are so many principles he went over, I’m just going to focus on one real quick.

And this is one of those that I’ve heard discussed, mostly on very high level courses that I have bought seminars I’ve been a part of, most people do not discuss these things on the lower levels.

That’s the concept of other people’s attention.

If you can understand how valuable it is to be able to use different sources of advertising, that don’t cost money and be able to team up with other people, places where people are already causing traffic.

That is huge, because we’re all kind of brought up in the mindset that it takes money to make money. And it’s just not true across the board.

Yes, having money is helpful. It’s a great shortcut to be able to purchase advertising from people that are selling basically spaces alongside of traffic, whether it be physical traffic, or virtual traffic.

That’s what advertising is.

People have already named a spot and they’re selling a space in order for you to be able to hopefully get attention from people there. But there are other places there are a million more free areas that you can advertise versus paid areas that you can advertise, like I said, paid areas are a shortcut, but they’re not necessarily the best.

And they’re certainly not the only place you can go other people’s attention. Finding other people that are already getting attention and putting yourself along with them in some way, makes a huge difference.

David was talking about doing this accidentally in the very beginning, when he started getting recommendations for his YouTube channel from other YouTube channels.

That’s fabulous stuff.

What happens when you actually go out there and produce that on your own?

What happens when you team up with people purposefully?

It can happen people do it all the time. I’ve worked with many clients and many friends who have been able to do this, not just in social media, but across the board, it doesn’t matter where you’re at, you can find a way to do what they call joint venture.

You can team up with somebody and do it at no cost or no additional costs to how you’re already running things and be able to get that extra attention. That is huge.

He spends a lot of time talking about that. Go back and re-listen to this podcast for sure.

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.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

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.

Joe Rieck – Emergency Essentials

Posted on July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Looking past the amazement of people lining up for full carts of toilet paper in the month of March. The real underlining concern for most Americans was for safety for their loved ones yes, but also an all too real lack of practical preparedness.

Join us today as Joe Rieck of Emergency Essentials (BePrepared.com) shares what life has been like since sales started to climb in the month of February. From challenges the company has faced to the customer letters of gratitude Joe’s received that help him and the staff know they are making a difference in tough times.

Our hopes align with Joe’s that in light of these challenges, people will view preparedness as a practical and safe thing to do in the future.

Find out more at their website and be sure to pickup a QSS certified, 1-Month Food Supply – https://beprepared.com/

Full Transcript

Brian: Joe Rieck is the VP of sales for Emergency Essentials. It can be found online at BePrepared.com.

He’s been involved with emergency preparedness for over 14 years, and he has helped thousands of people to become better prepared. Joe Rieck, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Joe: Hey, thanks Brian for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Brian: So why don’t you let everyone know a little bit about what it is that you do?

Joe: Okay, so emergency essentials, we specialize in long-term emergency food, and this usually consists of freeze dried items as well as dehydrated items. We have a wide selection of fruits, vegetables, meats, ready made meals, MRE’s, we have a wide selection of emergency gear, 72 hour backpacks, water filtration systems, anything you can kind of think that you might need an event of an emergency or disaster. We try to have you covered.

Brian: Great.

How did you personally end up here? What’s your life story up to this point?

Joe: Well, you know, about 10 to 11 years ago, I was involved with a company that we started a long-term food storage company that grew. And we ended up selling that off a couple years ago.

Typically once companies get in the hands of private equity groups, the mission kind of changes a little bit.

I was lucky enough to be found with a group called Emergency Essentials. And I’ve been here for over two years. It’s a great little company, we’re a privately held, there’s no private equity group that is responsible for to.

We have one owner and that’s the only person that we listen to, and that we kind of take advice from. And so it’s very, very simple.

We try to just be there for our customers the best that we can. So I actually love what we do here at Emergency Essentials and it’s been a lot of fun over the past couple of years.

Brian: Oh, fabulous.

So what where do you find new customers at?

Joe: Well, let me just tell you right now they’re coming out of the woodworks with this whole COVID-19 pandemic that we’re going through. It’s like, a flip was switched and everybody in the world kind of became well aware of the need to have a backup plan.

As you can imagine, with this COVID crisis that’s going on just our industry, our business, I mean, we’ve been hit tremendously hard, you know, in a positive way, because the amount of interest that we have in our products. And so it means it’s caused a little bit of hiccups from a business perspective as far as having the capacity to produce and to make the food and to get it packaged and prepared and shipped out, which caused some trouble that way as far as having a backorder list.

But as far as the knowledge and the need to educate people, the media has done a great job of showing what happens in the event of a disaster with the shelves being cleared off.

I think we all kind of went through that several months ago where we couldn’t even find toilet paper, for crying out loud. These things happen and it brings your awareness to a different level of, “oh my gosh, our system is so fragile.”

People don’t understand how fragile our economy is, just the grocery stores the logistics, you know, the inventory control systems that people get their shipments in these grocery stores the night before they sell it.

It’s not the way that it was 30, 40 years ago, where they had all the backroom full of supplies, it kind of brings to light, like I said, what people kind of realized, “Oh, my gosh, things are super, super fragile. I need to get prepared. I need to be self sufficient emergency essentials.”

We’re here to help people do that.

Brian: Really makes sense that you’d be going through that type of growth right now, especially with everything that’s going on.

At what point did you start seeing change from the business perspective? And how did that all come about?

Joe: A lot of our customers they’re kind of in the know already. And so I kind of feel fortunate in the fact that once we started seeing an uptick in sales and more traffic and more talking behind the scenes with our customers and kind of their feeling of what was happening.

We started to see sales increase the first part of February or the end part of January, we saw a significant increase the last two weeks of January and right on into February.

A lot of our customers, they’ve been prepping for years. And they’ve been kind of seen and kind of watching what happens and they’re proactive. That is one thing that our customers are very good at is they are good at kind of seeing stuff that’s coming down.

They’re being proactive and kind of hedging that curve, if that makes sense to get the things that they need. So that way they can be self sufficient if they needed to.

It didn’t become mainstream until February 26.

That was the day that everything just kind of blew up where it became mainstream. Everybody was concerned about it. Everybody wanted to kind of get prepared. It’s been that rise ever since February 26.

But we felt that probably about a month before the mainstream population really felt that something was going to be happening.

Brian: Makes sense.

So apart from your online business, are there other places where you guys do marketing or advertising?

Joe: There’s really not. Emergency Essentials, believe it or not, we’ve been around here in the Salt Lake City area for over 30 years here locally, people would come into our retail stores.

We have three different locations throughout Salt Lake City, Utah, and in the Wasatch Front, unfortunately, two years ago, we closed down those stores because we would just do more volume through our website, and more business outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, to where it just didn’t make sense to keep those stores open.

We are strictly online we are at BePrepared.com is our website. We do not have a lot of resellers or other companies that are authorized to sell our products.

It’s something that we’ve kind of shied away from on purpose, because we always want to be there for our direct to consumers.

We want to be the source. We want to be the place where they go to get it because once you start involving wholesalers and distributors, it increases the cost for everybody. So we want to be your one stop shop your direct source to the product from the people that actually manufacture it and make it

Brian: Absolutely, boy, that’s great.

What would you say is your ideal customer? If you had to describe them if they were out in the audience, what would they consist of?

Joe: As simple as it sounds, I would just say moms and dads, somebody who has the responsibility to care for not only for themselves, but they have the chart of other people, whether it be their own kids, whether it be their stepkids, or whether it be their their aging parents, anybody that has to continue to survive and look out for others, I think is our ideal customer.

Most of our customer base is going to be a little bit older generations, grandma’s grandpa’s, just because they have a little bit more of that disposable income.

They can afford to to purchase this stuff because there’s a lot of younger families that it’s a struggle for them to make ends meet a lot of these younger families, they’re still going to school. They’re not really establishing their careers.

So nobody really thinks about wanting to be prepared except for those who have already passed that point in there life.

A lot of our customers are in fact grandparents who see the need to help out their kids and their grandkids and say, “hey, let me get you a month supply for you and your family.”

That way you guys can have it just that way they know that they’re okay, and that they’re going to be okay, if that makes sense.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely.

So what’s your top selling product?

Joe: Our top selling products is going to be our month supply packages.

The really neat thing about these things is that we focus on making sure that you get the calories that you need for survival.

Brian, there’s a lot of companies out there who sell emergency food, don’t get me wrong, and there’s some really good companies out there. But one thing that they fail to mention, and they fail to really focus on is providing the right amount of calories, as well as the right amount of protein for survival.

If you were to do it, like just a general question to a lot of your audience, you’d say well, how many calories you need to survive, and everybody’s just kind of their top of their mind.

They’re gonna say we 2,000 calories, and they get that information from the USDA. They get that information from the FDA based off the studies and so to that calories is kind of like the tipping point, yes, some people need a little bit less, some people need a little bit more.

But 2,000 is what we consider what you need for survival.

The other part of that is also going to be the protein, you got to have at least 40 grams of protein per day for survival. You don’t want to just have to struggle during any type of an emergency.

But you got a lot of other things going on that you have to worry about and focus on it. So we try to take that guesswork out and make it simple for you.

So our best selling packages, they’re going to be our month supply packages that are QSS certified. And what that QSS certification stands for it stands for quality survival standards, where if you see that symbol on our product, you know that you’re going to get a over 2,000 calories per day and be over 40 grams of protein per day.

And that’s really where we stand out is no other companies can compete with having 2,000 calories per day as well as 40 grams of protein per day for the price point that we offer it out.

Brian: Wow, that’s great. That’s really cool. Kind of a mouthful, but it is interesting

Joe: Because that isn’t discussed a lot because of the difficulty of having to bring proteins into emergency prep food. Because a lot of companies will be like, “well, hey, look, look how many thousands of servings you’re gonna get for you and your family.”

But when you do the math on it, you’re living off of five 600 calories per day, and I’m sorry, Brian, you’re not going to survive off a five to 600 countdown, you’re just not going to. Like I said, we want to just provide an outstanding product for our customers where they know that what they have sitting there in their pantries or in their closets, is going to do exactly what they intended to do is to get them through those rough times.

Brian: Make sense, makes sense.

Joe, what do you like best about your business and your industry?

Joe: Honestly, I was asked that the other day, and what I love about this, and I know this is gonna sound like a major cliche, and it’s gonna sound really, really cheesy, but I’ll be honest with you, Brian. It really was brought to light over the past few months because we get hundreds of letters on a daily basis from our customers and going through those letters and actually seeing our product being used for what it’s intended for.

That’s the reason why we do it.

We got stories of parents who were unable to go to the grocery stores because they had loved ones that were susceptible to COVID. And they needed this help to shelter in place. They didn’t have enough food to get them through from the grocery store and guess what they were using.

They were literally using our product, they would go to the buckets, they’d grab up the pouch of the macaroni and cheese, add it to board and water and bam, they’d have dinner for them and their family, hearing those stories of people actually needing using our products.

That’s what’s so satisfying about this. That’s what keeps me coming back to work when things are hard and things are slow or whatever. But just knowing that we are really making a difference. It’s a feeling that I had that I felt the first time I ever sold my first mergency bucket, believe it or not, was just knowing that that family has something that they can fall back on if they ever need to do it.

Over the years, I’ve learned Brian that it doesn’t take a national pandemic for you to want to be prepared.

You think about if dad or mom were to lose their job, the income earner for that family, and they don’t have the ability to go out and purchase the food is that not an emergency for that particular family?

Just by having something stored away, whether it’s a week supply, whether it’s a month supply, whether it’s a year supply, having something that you can fall back on, that provides a peace of mind, for any parent, any any person out there who has to really provide for others?

Brian: Yeah, great. So that on the other end of things, if you could change anything about your business or the industry as a whole, what would it be?

Joe: 10 years ago, you would be considered one of the crazy preppers are one of the crazy guys, the conspiracy theorists out there. The guy that thinks that zombies are going to start walking around, you know, and capping off people. You don’t have to be like that.

I’m a person that I do believe that bad things happen. I do believe that earthquakes happen, that tornadoes happen, that economic things happen, and I don’t think anybody’s immune to those types of disasters.

Just creating that stigmatism isn’t away from that crazy conservative, grab your guns, nobody’s going to come take my family type of mentality. That is completely washed out the window.

Today, I look at it as like car insurance. We don’t buy car insurance hoping that we can get into an accident. We buy car insurance just in case if we find ourselves in that situation something to kind of help us out.

Same type of concept with this food.

We don’t buy this product hoping that the world is going to fall apart and that the US dollar is going to fail or that zombies are going to walk around. We buy this just in case something happens.

There’s a flood, the power goes out If dad loses his job, if there’s a national pandemic and they say, “Hey, stay in your house” or whatever. That’s the reason why you buy this stuff.

That’s the reason why we have it is just to prepare for those times. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be better prepared.

Brian: Hmm. Well, that’s a great point.

If you and I were talking and a year from now, we got back to the let’s say did another show and we looked at over the past 12 months, what would have had to have happened for you to feel happy with the progress in both your life and your business?

Joe: Number one, probably to be caught up with all of our past overdue orders.

We’re still behind as far as being able to fulfill those orders, you know, and we’re hopeful that we can be caught up here the next little bit. When I say that we have been working around the clock, we literally have been working around the clock.

I mean, here at our facility, we are open. We’re only shut down for three hours in a 24 hour period.

And that’s just to stop sanitize, clean the equipment. Get ready for the next shift to come in.

We’ve been going like this since February, there’s one thing that I really want to happen is I want to be able to have the capacity if there is a big emergency or national pandemic or something like that, we could actually be able to help out everybody who needs help.

We look back at the past five months, there’s a lot of missed opportunity because there’s just not the capacity for equipment for machine times to produce the amount of food that was really needed. And I don’t Anybody any fortune 500 company could have prepared for this type of increase in business increase in demand for your product.

I think other companies would have failed to where I pat ourselves on the back that we’ve done a tremendous job of being somewhat in front of the curve a little bit.

And I think we fared a lot better than a lot of our competitors.

Because we control the manufacturing, control over what we do with our machines and how we produce our machine. What items we produce.

It’s just a matter of having that extra built in capacity, having a backup plan for our backup plan that had a backup plan. It’s just nobody could prepare for that.

That was one thing that if we were to have this conversation again in a year, would be to, hey, I want to be able to be caught up and go back to our two day delivery time that our customers are used to having.

Brian: So what are the obstacles standing in your way of getting there right now?

Joe: Commodities and just the way to get it because when you talk about a commodity, you know, you’re looking at our industry in the emergency preparedness industry.

We’re not like a grocery store, we’re not like the big box stores like a craft or like Uncle Ben’s rice, when those items get sold off of the shelves, because those guys do millions and millions of dollars worth of product, we’re just a small piece of that.

They get priority over those commodity items. It’s just kind of waiting our turn. Even though in the industry, we’re one of the largest in the industry. But when you do it on a larger scale, we’re just very, very small fish. The Costco’s of the world, the Walmarts of the world, those guys get first priority to the raw ingredients to the actual supplies before we do just a matter of kind of fighting for our space and making sure that we have what we need to be able to cover for our customers as well.

I think right now people are more understanding of emergency food and the need for it.

So I think hopefully with time, people can start to understand, “oh my gosh, this is not one of those crazy things to do anymore.” But more of a practical safe thing to do.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So many things that go into all the mechanics and logistics with it, I can understand. Doesn’t take much….especially with nowadays with all the demand, the increase in demand, it doesn’t take much to slow things down.

Joe: I hope going through this it kind of helps our customers understand how fragile our system really is.

And you think about what just look at like the semi trucks that haul product back and forth. I mean, those guys seriously are the lifeline of this country.

If the trucking industry were to go down for some reason, or some form of another customer get product, how do grocery stores get food?

How do businesses get the materials, the raw materials that they need in order to produce to produce a product, everything is so critical, and everything is so intertwined, that if one piece falls off, the whole system shuts down.

We experienced that as well.

We have suppliers that provide us our film that we put our food in, and if we can’t have the film, we can’t put the food in it. If we can’t get the buckets are the width for the buckets if we can’t get those in.

I mean everything just stops and everything like I said is so intertwine that it’s a very very fragile system and it’s a juggling act to make sure that you can coordinate with the bucket supplier coordinate with the film supplier coordinate with the wrong ingredients supplier coordinate machine time. It’s a tremendous feat to do that.

Brian: Absolutely. Wow, that’s incredible behind the scenes look at things. Appreciate your help here, Joe.

We have a lot of people that listen to this for the perspective of business, even though we play within the self reliance field and cover everything for emergency preparedness on so what blanket advice would you have for someone either in your position or similar that you could leave us with today?

Joe: The overall piece of advice is just keep plugging away knowing what you’re doing, there’s a phrase that I absolutely love, Brian, it’s this, “The small and simple things make you the greatest things.”

So it’s a small and simple things that you do in day to day that you got to grind away and eventually you’re going to have this big huge thing at the end of the day at the end of the week or the end of the month or the end of the year.

Keep going, it’s a constant battle.

But I think going through this exercise with COVID, and really seeing how fragile things are, it’s not a crazy idea to be prepared.

It’s not a crazy idea to have a backup plan.

You know, we talked about having evacuation plans for the elementary schools, we talked about having all these little different backup plans, but it’s not a bad idea to do it.

And I hope it doesn’t take a national emergency like what’s going on right now, for people to understand that it’s okay to get prepared, be self-reliant, because the only person that really cares about your survival is yourself.

People think that the government’s going to come there to bail them out.

While the government does a great job as much as they can. Guess what, Brian it’s gonna take a long time for them to actually come to your door and be like, Hey, what do you need?

And that’s just not gonna happen.

Be self-reliant, be self-sufficient, and do what feels right, follow your gut.

That is one thing that is interesting is before all of this started, I can tell you numerous times I got a phone call saying, “Hey, Joe I don’t know why calling you, but I feel like I need to get something just because something’s going to be happening.”

I could tell you countless times, Brian when my phone would ring and that would be the conversation before this whole pandemic thing happened. Follow your gut.

If you feel like you need to do something, do it and act on it. Don’t just listen to it, but you got to act on it as well.

Brian: Absolutely. Great advice. Joe, where can people go to find out more about Emergency Essentials and anything that you guys provide?

Joe: Right you guys visit our website, go to BePrepared.com, browse our website.

It’s a very, very simple website. Don’t feel overwhelmed.

We have also preparedness specialists on the phone that you can call our toll free number. You can talk with myself, you can talk with you know some of the other preparedness specialists that can guide you through different plans and different options.

Because there’s just not a cookie cutter size. There’s not a one size fits all package because every family is going to be different

Brian, every family’s gonna have different needs different wants different habits.

Talking with a preparedness specialist. They can guide you through the things that you need.

They can help you get your basics covered.

They can help you get your more advanced stuff covered, help you come up with a plan to follow does take time to do this.

You can start off small and grow it up over time so that we can be prepared for it. Give us a call.

We’re more than happy to walk you through this. We’re happy to talk to you happy to share with you what we’ve discovered over the past little bit, what works best for us.

We can help you with whatever you guys need.

Brian: Fabulous. Okay, Joe Rieck from Emergency Essentials, thanks so much for being on the Off the Grid Biz Podcast.

Joe: My pleasure, Brian. I hope we can do this again sometime.

Brian: Absolutely.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: There it is another great conversation. I really enjoyed my time with Joe and there were about three things that I think stood out.

The first thing, he has a great ability to present his ideas, he clearly understands it and has all the facts and figures right on the tip of his tongue. That’s really good.

I know a lot of people might see that as kind of shallow praise, but it’s not because you need someone like that you need somebody and remember, he’s the VP of sales. He’s not the owner of the company.

He’s the VP of sales. And so that’s his job.

If you’re not the one that’s out there, doing the promoting, and you don’t have anyone that is ideally set to be the promoter, you need someone you need someone like Joe on your team, and I appreciate him for his ability to be able to do that.

Second thing is when he was discussing their ideal customer, as anybody that’s responsible for somebody else. So whether you’re talking about parents, or whether you’re talking about children, taking care of their elderly parents or anything of that sort.

Those are the type of people that are their ideal customer.

Now that obviously that doesn’t mean this their only customer. But he knew exactly what I meant. He knew I meant ideal customer who were the people that are your slam dunk customers.

And that’s really neat to see because oftentimes when people talk about ideal customers, they talk about demographics. So they talk about their age, or their gender, and all that stuff’s great and it’s important to know all that.

But it’s also important to know the psychographic which is the things that describe how they think and feel.

That’s where he went directly to and that was really key and something that you should take note of when you’re talking about your ideal customer or thinking about or designing your ideal customer. Really think not just about who they are on the outside, what’s going on on the inside, what’s the conversation going on in their head.

The third thing is how well this company is doing during what is basically a recession brought on by the COVID-19 situation and the fact that their demand is going through the roof.

It’s not uncommon in certain sectors.

Obviously, if you’re in emergency preparedness, anything of this sort, these type of companies are having increased demand during this time, especially in comparison to where it was just before, I would recommend that you at least have some element of your company that may not be doing great all the time.

But when times get tough, it’s where people run into.

I saw a lot of people in the emergency preparedness and survival niches that were having a tough time during the good economic times leading up to 2020. And then as soon as COVID-19 hit and you had forced quarantine and so forth, you had everything being pulled back, and all of a sudden things like emergency preparedness go through the roof.

So it’s an important thing to keep in mind with your business. You have an element of your business that though it may go bad and good times should have an element that goes good and bad times if you get my drift on that all these points and plus all the other little nuggets that Joe brought up.

I think it makes this worth relisting to, again and again. So go back and re-listen to this conversation sometime and I think it’ll be helpful to you too.

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.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact. Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

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.

Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast

Stories for the Self-Reliant!

Tag: emergency prepping

David Gilmore – LDS Prepper

Transcription

Joe Rieck – Emergency Essentials

Full Transcript