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.

Justin Lair & John DeSpain – Fiber Light Fire Starters

Posted on October 24, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 26.

What has been the ideas that have catapulted your business? Have you found them yet? Were they where you expected them to be?

Justin Lair is a United States Marine Corps Veteran who has created “one of the best Natural Fire Starters on the market .” John DeSpain, who met Justin while working in real estate, partnered with Justin and is helping expand the brand through trade shows, additional retailers and new products.

In our conversation we go over the obstacles, the wins and the future for Justin and John. Their journey is very unique, but the principles they discuss are helpful to any growing entrepreneur.

Listen Now!

Find out more about Justin, John and Fiber Light Fire Starter: https://fiberlightfs.com/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Justin: I knew that I wanted to start looking at big box retail. This was my first not my first business, but my first product, right?

So I had to learn a lot about how retail works. And I found out very quickly that buyers for big box retails, they don’t return phone calls, and they don’t return emails ever.

So I was determined to figure out how do I get ahold of these people?

And I found out that they spend most their time and attention at trade shows.

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: Justin Lair is a Marine Corps veteran and entrepreneur moved from Southern California to Oregon four years ago.

Once in Oregon, he started, Fiber Light Firestarters. Two years after the start of Fiber Light, Justin met John DeSpain and brought him on as a business partner.

John, who moved to Oregon from the Bay Area at a young age, is a brilliant young entrepreneur heavily involved in the real estate business. Justin Lair and John DeSpain, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Justin & John: Thank you. Thank you.

Brian: So besides what we heard in your bio, tell us a little more about who you are what you do.

Justin: Well, I’ll start my name’s Justin, appreciate you having us on the podcast.

It’s pretty exciting for us. Been a serial entrepreneur my whole life.

I started my first business when I was 15. That business inadvertently got shut down just because I went to the Marine Corps and my best friend who was my best partner at the time he went off to college and we so we shut the business down.

I spent my time in the Marine Corps and then came back home, which is my home is considered Southern California. Got married, we moved down to Orange County, me and my wife. We have two kids.

Started a couple other businesses during that time of my life.

All my previous businesses were service based businesses. The last business I had down there was a wood floor company, sold that company and ended up moving up here to Oregon.

And then the fiber Light started once I got up here, yeah, that’s pretty much where we’re at now.

John: I’m john, move to Klamath Falls, Oregon from the Bay Area when I was in the fifth grade, graduated from Klamath Falls, at Henley and had great role models growing up.

My father, my mom, just taking me down the right path. It was easy for me to kind of follow in their footsteps getting into some real estate and everything and then Justin came to me with a very awesome opportunity with Fiber Light.

We just kind of hit the ground running with it. I’m super stoked to be part of this company.

Brian: So for people that don’t know about what Fiber Light is, why don’t you give us a little bit of background?

Justin: Yeah, so Fiber Light, it’s funny, at trade shows we oftentimes, the customers are the people walking by the booth and they see the product, they have that moment of like, Wow, this is so simple.

Why didn’t I think of this? or How did you come up with this?

You know, I want to know the story. It’s not very exciting story, but it’s an interesting one that I find myself having to repeat rather often.

But it was kind of an accident down the street from my house is a very large wood mill, up here in Oregon.

There’s what, two or three wood mills here in our town, and we live in a tiny little town.

And there’s a wood mill that had waste product, which was a wood fiber and they just throw it away.

And from what I understand if it hits the ground to waste and they throw it away. And so as an entrepreneur, everything that comes to me everything I hear, I’m always thinking about, you know, is there a way to make money or way to turn that into a business?

So I saw this waste and I was like, man, there’s something I could do with that. I got the waste fiber and I started playing around with it, mixing it with some other stuff ended up turning into a really awesome fire starter.

Talking about fire starters, we’re talking about fire starting tools for outdoor hiking, hunting, camping, stuff like that.

Once I kind of discovered this thing that I had made, I then began the journey of figuring out if it was any good.

Owning several businesses throughout my life, I’m always very aware of the idea of like, dude, do I have an ugly baby? Or is it really a good looking baby?

So I didn’t want this to be my ugly baby. Needed to find out if if in fact, it was good, as good as I thought it was. That there was a market for it and that people would buy it.

I spent the first year going along that journey. And I sent it off to a lot of outdoor people that I knew spend time in the woods that I knew had experience with other firestarters. I got really lucky, I got in touch with a handful of outdoor YouTubers that are like you know, gear review YouTubers.

Sent it to them and got everybody’s feedback.

Everyone really liked it and kind of confirmed my ugly baby was not so ugly, ended up selling 36,000 cans of the Firestarter that first year.

And that really solidified the whole thing.

I started growing the business, essentially a fire tinder. I did not yet sell something that would that would light that on fire. I assumed that everybody who purchased it had their own way of lighting them on fire, obviously with matches or lighters, but I wanted to have a more dependable way to light it on fires.

I started doing research and finding the best supplier the best manufacturer of ferrocerium rods and which I feel like I did I basically contacted as many manufacturers of ferrocerium rods as I could.

Had them send me samples and I tested them all because, you know, by then I had Fiber Light on the market for a year and I was growing very fond of my product. I wanted to have a really good companion to it.

I didn’t want to have a really nice fire starter but a not so good ferrocerium rod to start it with, because I took it very seriously. And I believe I found the best manufacturer of ferrocerium rods.

Those are the same rods we have today.

And then I started just expanding with other fire starting tools, other things that I felt kind of went well with Fiber Light. You know, now we have a whole lineup of products that are really awesome fire starting tools.

Another kind of pushed for me to get the fairgrounds figured out was I knew that I wanted to start looking at big box retail.

This was my first not my first business but my first product right, so I had to learn a lot about how retail works.

I found out very quickly that buyers for big box retails, they don’t return phone calls and they don’t return emails ever.

And so I was determined to figure out how do I get ahold of these people and I found out that they spend most of their time and attention at trade shows. Because the trade shows they get to touch it, they get to feel it, they get to talk to you face to face.

Then I knew I wanted to go on a full like a national tradeshow tour that second year, but I wanted to go with more than just the can of Fiber Light.

So that’s another thing that pushed me to to get the ferrocerium rods and some other products.

That next year, I traveled to as many big trade shows as I could. I spent over six months on the road with my family. And we just went from trade show to trade show. And it was an amazing experience.

Anybody trying to bring a product to market that is a key factor.

It really took Fiber Light from being just something I was making in my garage, to like a real business.

I met a ton of very big outdoor people that I’m grown a lot of great friendships with big people in the outdoor industry.

I met a lot of the buyers and you know, Fiber Light came on the map at that point.

We’ve got a ton of exposure on YouTube and social media. It was just really all from that, six months I spent on the road at trade shows getting out there in front of the people. It was awesome.

And we still do trade shows today.

We, me and john, we do we try to do at least one big trade show a month.

We just had one this last weekend, we have another one coming up. That’s a really big one that we’re really excited about in the end of October.

And so, yeah, that’s kind of the history of Fiber Light.

And then if it wasn’t clear what fiber light is, again, we make different fire starting tools for outdoors hiking, camping, hunting, general survival preparedness, even like the occasional zombie apocalypse.

Brian: Excellent. You mentioned trade shows.

That’s how I originally heard about you was you guys were at the Mother Earth News Fair and Albany.

And Janice Cox was the one that alerted me to the fact that you were there and she wanted to make sure that we got in touch.

But I don’t think we ran across you. So it’s great to be able to see you here. What got you in touch with the Mother Earth News Fair. And is this your first year of doing that?

Justin: That was the first year of Mother Earth News. Can’t remember exactly how it came up.

But you know, whenever you go to a trade show, there’s always people there saying, hello, hey, there’s this other trade show that you guys would do really good at, you should check it out.

Somewhere along the way, Mother Earth News was brought up to me that it would be a good one for us to do. So it was on the list.

And I think we ended up missing that next year, which would have been not this past Mother Earth News Fair, but the year before we just end up missing that one. And so I knew that I wanted to do this one this year.

Brian: Excellent.

Justin: It’s always nice when we have a pretty good size, you know, well known trade show that’s not too far away from us.

Brian: Now, in terms of your long-term customer base, are you focused mainly on doing the wholesale end and getting it through them and having them put it in front of your end customer?

Or are you also looking for a direct relationship with customers?

Justin: At this point, it’s both. It initially started direct to customer again, it was first time ever in retail with a product, I had no idea what I was doing.

The only thought was, you know, put it on Amazon, get it in front of the biggest market that I could find.

It’s funny, I didn’t even have a website.

In the beginning, I was kind of intimidated by the idea of a retail website, because again, it was something I had never done before.

I had a domain name, which is still our domain name now, but it didn’t….this is so funny. It didn’t go to a website, if you went to the domain name and went straight to our Amazon page.

Then I kind of quickly got tired of the Amazon fees.

And I knew that I would direct people to my website and sell at full retail without having to worry about Amazon fees.

But I also I absolutely understand the value of Amazon and the size of the market there.

So I mean, we’re still on Amazon. So that’s how it started.

I was direct a customer through Amazon and then eventually through our own website, and then I started having a desire to want to sell in retail stores.

So I started pursuing that deal.

The other thing is, it’s really hard to ignore wholesale because the reality is, if we look at it now and we take the percentage of sales, retail sales of Fiber Light versus wholesale sales of Fiber Light. The wholesale side just completely destroys the retail side for us.

That approach actually came to me when I think like right after I started Fiber Light, the whole trend of the monthly subscription boxes was kind of exploding. And it was exciting.

It was a new thing and every market that you could think of was starting to have their own subscription box.

That was my first focus was contacting all the outdoor monthly subscription boxes and sending them you know, sample products, just so I could get into a subscription box and we’ve been in every single major outdoor subscription box and those are huge.

You’re looking at 10 to 20,000 pieces that go all out at once, directly to the customers hands and that really grew brand Fiber Light.

You know, gave us lot of exposure.

Another funny thing is, I remember, maybe three months in after I officially started Fiber Light, and I had the packaging. And again, this is at the time where we only sold just the the round tins of Fiber Light.

My first big wholesale order was the most obscure. I can’t even believe that I sold it. And they’re still a customer today, but it was to a radio show.

They sell a lot of survival products on their website. And I don’t even listen to the radio show.

I heard about it through a friend.

And then I ended up contacting them and they ordered 2,500 pieces and that was three months in. And that was my first big sale.

It was like, quite interesting. I didn’t even have the ability to manufacture that many. Like I didn’t have the manufacturing tools in place.

So I was doing it all by hand and it was I lost three fingernails during the process. It was interesting.

It forced us to move along quickly. It was awesome. Actually, I was pretty happy about that moment.

Brian: So besides all the wholesale opportunities you’ve had in the retailing via the Amazon, your website, the trade shows, are there any other forms of marketing that you’re doing on a regular basis, either online or offline?

Justin: We do social media. In the first year, first year and a half, maybe even like into the second year. I really spent a lot of time on Facebook.

And I would do like live broadcasts on Facebook and just kind of talk about our products and talk about competitors products.

I would even talk about just totally random stuff that had nothing to do with my company. That was fun.

I built up the Facebook group to a pretty decent size. And I spent a little bit of money on ads there.

I’m absolutely aware of how powerful social media is. We spend most of our time now on Instagram.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook anymore. I don’t really know why that happened or how that happened.

I think what it was was before the trade shows, when I went on that trade show tour, I was heavy on Facebook and then I was just away from my home office traveling for that six months, and I just totally got away from Facebook.

And then when I got back, I was just kind of busy in a different way than I was before I left.

So the Facebook thing never really came back into my daily routine. And then my wife was always pushing me to that I should get on Instagram.

I did see during that time how Instagram is kind of becoming the new Facebook and a lot of ways for businesses. So I just started to spend a little bit more time on Instagram, but I’m still not very good at that, like consistency and stuff like that.

You’ll notice my Instagram posts really just kind of revolve around the trade shows that we do once a month. And that’s when I’m most active on there.

In between the trade shows I’m not super active on it.

But I’m very aware of how powerful social media is. And that’s one thing I would like to get better at.

We do have a marketing team that we’re ramping up to begin some very large campaigns both on social media and in traditional marketing. It’s just not happening, yet. But it’ll be happening soon.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you.

As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this. If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited. They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: How would you describe like your ideal customer?

Justin: Ideal customer is, obviously an outdoor person, camper, hiker, hunter, survivalist.

We did PrepperCon two years ago and that was quite successful.

That pretty much encompasses at all, I mean, if they like camping or hiking, hunting, they totally get it.

It’s interesting because we started doing me and john, we just did a couple fairs. It was the first time I’ve ever done a fair and it was so surprising how different a fair was compared to like an outdoor show where everyone who’s there obviously loves the outdoors.

Brian: Yeah.

Justin: Or for example, like PrepperCon everyone there is like a prepper. And they want to buy gear and they want to, they all have the same mindset.

But when you go to a fair, you have every single demographic there.

And so it’s a lot more work at a fair. We’ve got to do a lot more demonstrations for people, you know, the light bulb to go off and people to understand what we’re showing them, as opposed to, you know, and an outdoor show that before we even start the demonstration, they already have a total understanding of what we’re doing.

Brian: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, the two fairs that we just tried, they were just local fairs.

So I don’t imagine that we would travel very far to go to any other fairs, but we might continue to do the local fairs every year.

Brian: Excellent.

John: One thing that I’m really surprised about with the fairs and stuff like that is since we do live in Oregon, we do have quite a bit of snow and stuff like that.

There’s a ton of people that after you show them the demo, they do see amazing value about even just putting our product like in the glove box of their cars, something like that.

So if they do get stuck on a pass, and this last year, we had a pass that got shut down for 36 hours and people were stranded up at the top of the past with 72 trees across the highway. After that, people started to realize the value of having a reliable fire starter that can be lit when it’s wet, snowing and anything like that, that could possibly save their lives.

Brian: Oh, that’s very interesting, kind of a practical emergency prep end of things. That’s great.

Justin: Yeah, there’s definitely two types of customers.

You have the customer who they see it and they plan on using it like the next time they start a fire.

And like every time they start a fire from there on out, and then you have customers who they’ll be totally honest, are like, I can’t tell you the last time I started a campfire, like I we don’t camp like I don’t do this.

But when and if there is a time where I need to do it. This is going to be a great product for us.

And so you got those customers who aren’t planning on using it the next time they start a fire, and then they’re not planning on using it all the time, they’re planning on using it that one time that they desperately need a fire.

It’s a very useful tool for, you know, to get the job done. That’s another very good description of the two different types of customers.

Brian: What do you like best about your business and your overall industry?

Justin: Oh, that’s a good question. Let me think about that one really quick.

John: I know for me, I’ve always been into fishing and hiking, hunting, just outdoors in general. So the people that get an encounter at all the trade shows and everything, I can relate with all of them very well.

I just enjoy talking to them. And it’s just super easy to relate to our clients and the people that we sell to.

Justin: The other thing I think is really cool, is it’s something so simple as fire, but it’s also something so important as fire. A lot of people take fire for granted.

Because it’s so simple with the tools that we have or you know just, the different resources that you have now is with technology and things like that.

But when it’s real serious and you don’t have all your you know, you don’t have your home and all your tools at your disposal, and you’re forced to in a situation that you need fire. I think a lot of people would be surprised how many people don’t know how to make a fire with limited resources.

You know, in the right situation. Fire can be the most important thing in your whole entire life at that moment.

Our tools allow for that simple thing of fire that sometimes might not be so simple to be able to get it done. We oftentimes say in our demonstrations at trade shows it’s like a cheaters way to start a fire.

Super easy, takes all the frustration sometimes out of fire.

We hear it countless times over and over again.

Customers, a lot of times it’s wives complaining about the husband. Like last time when we oh my gosh, we should have had this with us camping last summer because Johnny couldn’t get a fire started for four hours.

John: And it’s nice because our product, it’s not cumbersome. Like it’s super easy to use to pack when you get right down to to it, fits inside the same size tin as what I altoids tin is. It’s not going to be bulky or big or add a lot of weight, you’re adding three ounces to your pack, which isn’t anything.

So it’s just super easy to carry, super easy to use, just all around convenient.

Brian: If you can change one thing about your business and industry, what would it be?

John: That’s tough.

Justin: That is tough. Because we’re pretty proud of it.

The industry is really strong. I find you know, I haven’t been in too many other industries. So I don’t have first hand experience, but it feels like the people who love the outdoors. It’s like a tight knit community.

We all love the same thing. We all you know, enjoy the same stuff.

The community is great, maybe just making buyers more accessible, but it’s more of a joke.

Brian: Anything about your day to day business life that you’d like to be different?

Justin: We need a bigger shop and we’re working on that.

We should be having a new shop in the next month or two just and that’s really actually a great problem to have, we only need a new shop because business is so great and we’re outgrowing the shop that we’re in.

John: And we did that quick too.

We moved into the new shop and what it’s been for five months, and we already outgrew the one that we got. Yeah. And then just a couple things on our side with a production. We have a couple little things that hold us up, but we’re also working with couple engineers to figure out our little slowdowns and make our process work a little bit more efficient.

Brian: Very cool. That’s excellent. That’s great to hear.

If we were to have you two back on the show, let’s say in a year and we looked back over the last 12 months, what would have had to have happened for you to feel happy with your growth?

Justin: You opened up a can of worms.

The next year is going to be unbelievable. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about it.

Brian: Laughs.

Justin: I could tell you a little bit.

We have a new product coming out that we were hoping to be able to debut to the market this November, at the Outdoor Retailer show in Colorado, some things got held up and prototyping and we didn’t want to rush to the launch is very important to us to for it to go as smooth as possible.

So we are, we pushed back the launch till June of next year, which is the next Outdoor Retailer show that particular product.

We’re submitting for innovative product of the Year Award, we believe we have a really solid shot of getting that the most heaviest weighing factor in winning the innovative product of the Year award is environmental impact.

And our new product hits that harder than anything I’ve seen come out new in the outdoor industry.

I wish I could tell you more about it because I’m so excited about it.

It’s been something I’ve been working on for about two years.

And with Johnny coming on board. We’ve accelerated that process. We’ve gotten two prototypes back and we’re working on the third and final prototype right now.

We have an entire engineering and design to alongside with us helping us get this thing going.

It’s one of the most exciting things that is going to come to an outdoor world.

I know it’s so hard to even hear what I just said, because we’re such a little guy in the outdoor world, we make a little Firestarter out of wood fiber. But this is something totally different.

It’s absolutely related to what we do. It’s never been done before in the outdoor world.

The idea of that completely shocks me that this has never been done before.

It’ll be another one of those things that when you hear about it, and see it, you’ll be like, Oh, my gosh, why has this not been done before?

How is this gone, so many years?

Someone hasn’t come up with this concept yet.

Kind of like when Uber happened, and everyone’s like, Oh, my gosh, what?

That’s such a simple thing.

It’s one of those moments and it’s going to be a great moment, and that’s debuting next June at the Outdoor Retailer show. So next year, if we talked we would have gone past that and hopefully we’d have an innovative product the year award sitting here on the desk, and our lives will be completely different than what they are now.

Brian: What are the obstacles standing in your way of getting that award and moving forward with a new product?

Justin: There’s not too many. We’ve been overcoming them for the past two years, at least I have Johnny for the last year alongside with me.

So we’ve overcome a lot of them.

The last one is just finding the right manufacturer first is getting this final prototype exactly the way we want it. After that would be to find the perfect manufacturer for us.

And then the last thing we’ll just be launching, you know, we want that debut to go as perfect as possibly can for the market the rest of the market to instantly see what it is and how much of an impact it has.

I think about that all the time. I want people, that day, I envision this day in my mind all the time.

And the one thing I want to make sure we get right when somebody walks, they’re walking down the showroom floor, right I’m at Outdoor Retailer and they’re going past this booth and they’re going past that booth.

And then they come to our booth, that moment that they make eye contact with our booth.

The timeframe between the moment they make eye contact with us to the moment that the light bulb goes off in their head with I understand this, I want that to be as short as possible.

Definitely doable, and we got to make sure everything is perfect, but um, that’s really the obstacle.

Those are the three things prototype manufacturing, and that day at the show. And if all that stuff happens the way we’re expecting it to happen, yeah, we’re on our way at that point.

Brian: Awesome. Boy, that’s quite a tease. We gotta wait till June to find out. That’s amazing.

Justin: Yeah, the one thing you or any of the listeners can do. Our website FiberLightFS.com. You can also get there by going to FiberLightFirestarters.com.

Obviously, the fiber light FA is short for fire starter.

That’ll take you to the website down at the bottom of the website. You could sign up for the email list.

Me and John, we’re the only ones that run the website.

I don’t even know how to do like run an email marketing campaign.

So you’re not going to get spammed with a whole bunch of stuff.

So you don’t have to worry about that. But you could go to the website and join the email list. We do expect that everything is going to be ready for the product long before June. And then we’ll probably have some sort of a soft launch before Outdoor Retailer.

So yeah, we will send out emails and it’ll be on the website, what the product is, and we’ll launch it there. So that’ll be the way to learn about what we’re talking about the quickest.

Brian: Fabulous, a great lead in and a great way for people to keep in touch with you.

We’ll make sure we have a link in the description. Any final advice that you have for other aspiring business owners or current business owners or executives that may be in a similar position to you?

Justin: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of advice.

Um, first thing if anybody wants to pick my brain ask me questions about bringing a product from conception to market. I love that type of stuff.

I know that I had people help me along the way. And so I absolutely love to give back as much as possible.

I’m extremely transparent.

I’m not afraid of talking numbers talking about things about the business. The other thing I would say is find a mentor, find somebody who’s done it before and lean on them.

I think that’s really important.

Because you can get a whole lot more stuff done by asking somebody who’s already done it, then just you searching Google, try to figure it out yourself.

It’s not impossible. It’s, it’s very possible.

There’s a lot of tools and resources and things that I’ve stumbled upon or things that I’ve learned about that have helped bring this thing along as far as it’s come.

The idea of thinking out of the box in regards to like the subscription boxes, or little things like that is huge subscription boxes are always looking for new products to put in their boxes.

And it’s a very quick way for you to sell 15 to 20,000 pieces of whatever you’re selling.

And the great thing about subscription boxes is It’s not like as a retailer buying a bunch of your product to sit on their shelf, it’s already sold, your product is going to go in a box that’s already sold to the customer.

All the customers are going to receive that product, all 15,000 of them are going to go out.

So the subscription box is huge for a new company with a new product, trying to you know, spread the word and let people know about the business.

Subscription boxes are huge and subscription boxes are like every industry, you could get a subscription box for lipstick, you could get a subscription box for cologne, you could get a subscription box for shoes and watches and everything.

And so whatever your market is, their subscription boxes out there for that.

And those subscription boxes. That’s all they do every single month that it’s time to set up a new box and they need new products to go in that box.

So that was a big thing that helped us a lot.

But yeah, my email is on my website, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me. I’d be happy to you know, answer questions or give you some pointers and point you in some sort of direction that might help out. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

John: What Justin and I always live by too, is we always tell each other, don’t talk about it, be about it.

Don’t just say you’re going to do something good. Get down there, get grinding and make things happen.

Don’t expect things to happen for you.

Justin: That’s actually….I’m so happy John said that because no joke. We tell each other that like on a daily basis, whether it’s in a text message, or whatever.

And so many things have happened because of that mindset. Whenever one of us is like, Oh, hey, I had an idea. I wanted to contact this company to see about this…

As one of us is saying that, the other person just looks at the other person and just says, we’ll just call them. What are we talking about this for?

You know, don’t talk about it, be about it.

That’s something we remind each other all the time, and so much has happened because you just make the phone call.

Brian: Fabulous. you’ve provided so much value to this episode. I know that anyone that listens to this is going to want to re-listen to it and be able to catch all those little tidbits.

I mean, there’s fabulous stuff. It just goes on and on.

There with Fiber Light Fire Starters. Justin Lair and John DeSpain, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Justin & John: Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Wow, that was some good conversation.

I bet if you go back and re-listen to that, you’ll hear so much of what we hear from other business owners, but also so much that you’ve never heard before.

It always amazes me how many people are able to find other elements that no one else is using anywhere near their market.

And Justin and John are certainly examples of that.

I love how they tested the feedback from their market as early as possible. Justin was discussing how he got it out there and got it in people’s hands, got them to try it out, got feedback directly from them sold directly to the customer as early as possible.

That is such important advice.

Anybody could use that, especially people that are starting right off the bat getting it directly in your customers hands, your ideal customer.

Especially when he was talking about trying to get into the big box retailers, talking about how buyers don’t return phone calls or emails. That’s a reality check for a lot of people who are just starting out trying to get the attention of buyers from retail locations. And it’s absolutely true.

I’ve seen it in my own situation. I’ve seen it in other people’s situations.

And a lot of times they’re caught / you’re caught off guard if you’re new to that field.

If you’re trying to get attention. If you’re doing any form of business to business, you will be amazed how little callbacks you get.

I mean it will it is amazing when you actually get a return phone call or return email or reply back. You will really know that you’re on track when you get that call back or that returned email, the conversation having to do with trade shows and how they’ve been able to use trade shows, especially in the outdoor niche in order to help them and having that be a key factor in building his business.

That’s a huge deal.

Knowing which ones to go after is the important thing though. As he said, he’s getting a different result from going to the Mother Earth News Fairs, as opposed to the outdoor specific trade shows.

This is something to take into account when you’re looking at events of any form, especially trade shows, fairs, things of that sort, and how the audience fits into what you’re attempting to sell them, whether it be a product and or service.

This is all things great questions to consider before you go out there and put your hard earned time and money behind trying to attract an audience via an event.

I think this is one of the first times we’ve had anyone discuss subscription boxes to such a huge extent and talking about that being a huge event in their business using subscription boxes.

Are there subscription boxes out there that could contain something from your business?

Even if you’re doing a service?

Can you offer some form of coupon or initial consultation?

Or what have you, whatever it is that you’re offering?

Can you productize it and shove it inside a subscription box inside to reach your ideal audience?

That’s a great idea and a great place that I think most people would never think of in a million years. How do you relate back with your clients?

Do you have the same attitude that Justin and John do, as this is our people, we understand them we’re outdoors, people like them, we know where they’re coming from, we know what they’re looking for next. And not only that, they’re so confident about that.

Our next product is going to hit that market so directly, that shows you people who really understand their customers.

On top of that, they mentioned the concept of awards, having your products or services win awards, that builds authority.

It builds trust with your marketplace, you’re looking to stand out that’s important to see what awards are available.

And some of that final advice that Justin mentioned about finding friends and mentors that can help you along through the process. I think if we ever talked to Justin again, I’d love to dig in and find out his story about who have been the friends and mentors that have helped him build his business and do it relatively consistently having consistent growth.

Love to see where they go from here and what their new product venture is.

That’s coming out soon.

What a great talk and look forward to seeing more from Justin and John at Fiber Light Firestarters.

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.

1st Episode: Off-the-Grid Biz?

Posted on April 9, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 001. Why “Off-the-Grid Biz?” What’s it all mean? In this mini-episode, host Brian J. Pombo introduces himself explains the story behind this new and strange podcast show.

Transcript

Brian: Alright, welcome to the very first Off The Grid Biz Podcast, a place for conversations about out of the box businesses with heavy ecommerce elements. I’m Brian Pombo.

So why Off The Grid Biz?

What’s it all mean?

Well, it all goes back to growing up working on the family cattle ranch in the San Joaquin Valley of California. There was always a mystery and romance surrounding the concepts of living off the land.

My grandma used to talk about our pioneer ancestors.

Well, part of me always look to escape the country life for adventure and fortune in the real cruel, unknown world. Allah Luke Skywalker, the other half of me looked hunker down and live off the land.

As a young adult and 1999 I had the chance to attend a survival and emergency preparedness show that was dedicated to those concerned about the Millennium bug of 2000.

Which if you don’t know about go and look it up, I was amazed at the variety of wares and information for sale, everything from nuclear bunkers to, to gardening instructions to outright extremists, political tomes. There was tons on alternative energy and food storage.

While I wasn’t scared about the Millennium bug I, I was a little smitten with all of it, to tell you the truth. But as January 1st came and went, it became one of those last memories that I would someday look back upon.

Fast forward somewhere around 17 years and I’ve actually built up a nice little consulting firm where I work as a business strategist, helping successful but overworked business owners transform their companies into perfect dream asset scenarios.

I’ve worked in a lot of different capacities for a number of larger groups, Microsoft, Shell, Craftsman, Ink Magazine as well as a number of radio networks and smaller podcasters.

In discussing people I can help with my friend and business associate, Sean E. Douglas we brainstormed those industries that we could be passionate about.

And the one we tend to to come back on again and again, was those all connected with self reliance.

So where does one go from there?

I just began emailing and calling up owners and executives of companies that I found interesting, and those ones that I really thought had a unique self reliance flair to them.

Spoke to so many different types of people. Spoke to people selling beekeeping supplies, goat milk, soap, people selling livestock, homesteading supplies, gardening needs, like fertilizer and heirloom seeds.

These were the type of people we were talking to people who had started companies from scratch, anything that had to do with do it yourself.

Really, as these conversations continued. I met some of the most interesting people with some of the most intriguing stories.

So Sean and I kind of sat back and ponder, what if I could take these stories and condense them, maybe edit them down, add a little emphasis were needed, and then spread them out there as podcasts?

After all, we’ve done it a million times for our clients, why not do it for ourselves?

So here it is the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

With Sean running duty as a producer and lead researcher and myself as host, we’re given the chance to tell some of the stories while at the same time letting a select few listeners know how I can help fix their nasty headaches, introduce them to a friction free zero point lifestyle through my personal strategy sessions and products.

So here we are, we’ve got a lot of great conversations coming up that we’ve already recorded.

We’re just getting them edited and sending them out to you.

Along with this first episode, there should be at least one or two other episodes available for you to listen to.

I hope you enjoy it, love to hear some feedback.

You can find us over at OffTheGridBiz.com.

And you can also find me at BrianJPombo.com. If you want to learn more about me or the services I offer.

Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast

Stories for the Self-Reliant!

Tag: survival

David Gilmore – LDS Prepper

Transcription

1st Episode: Off-the-Grid Biz?

Transcript