In today’s episode I am sitting down with the host of the popular Amazon podcast – Seller Sessions – Daniel McMillan! We talk about the topic of setting boundaries. We have limited amounts of energy as business owners yet we let others people, events, projects constantly drain us which inevitably leads to more stress. We discuss ways to say “no” more and remove “energy vampires” from our life. We also look into how to surround yourself with positive people in your business, including how to find the right business partner.
Danny is the host of Seller Sessions, the largest podcast for advanced Amazon sellers.
A world-renowned public speaker and veteran Amazon Seller, Danny is also the co-founder of DATAbrill. Working alongside respected algorithm expert Dr. Ellis Whitehead, DATAbrill manages PPC and advertising automation for 6, 7 & 8 figure Amazon brands.
He also works with Amazon HQ in the UK, he was headhunted to provide webinar content for the 3rd party sellers on the platform. He is the host of Seller Sessions Live the summer conference for Amazon Sellers and brands. He is the founder of SellerPoll the annual awards for the Amazon FBA community.
Date: August 10, 2020
Episode: 20
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Danny McMillan, a Co-Founder of DATAbrill, a Seller Session’s Host, a World-renowned Speaker, a Veteran Amazon Seller and a Founder of Seller Poll.
Subtitle: Lack of Boundaries Invites Lack of Respect
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/20-host-of-seller-sessions-danny-mcmillan/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Danny McMillan, a Co-Founder of DATAbrill, a Seller Session’s host, a World-renowned Speaker, a Veteran Amazon Seller and a Founder of Seller Poll.
Danny McMillan is the host of Seller Sessions, the largest podcast for advanced Amazon sellers and Seller Session Live for Amazon sellers and brands. He is working with algorithm expert Dr. Ellis Whitehead and works with Amazon HQ in the UK.
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Norman 0:03
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy and welcome to another Lunch with Norm.
Norman 0:20
So while we’re broadcasting to you live on Facebook and YouTube, Kelsey, why don’t you tell everybody what they’re supposed to do?
Kelsey 0:28
Lots of stuff today to go over. But first follow us on social media. So we are on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok. Yeah, give us a follow and if you’re enjoying this content, just please like and share. It helps get the word out for us.
Norman 0:49
So yeah, great. Today is a very special day for us. Not only do we have an amazing guest, but because of all the positive feedback that we’ve received over the last little while, this is our first official podcast and the first official podcast and I’ve got a cough. But anyways, we are officially launched, Lunch with Norm. You can find it on Apple or any of your podcast platforms. We just launched this morning, lunchwithnorm.com. I really would like to get your feedback on what you think of it. I think our graphic designers did a great job on it. All of our past episodes will be there as well as all of our new. The description also will be in the comment field if you want to just check on it.
Kelsey 1:36
Yeah, I already put it in the comments. If you’re looking to download our podcast, just click on the link below, and you should be able to find it. So yeah, If you want to review, download, subscribe. It’ll help us to kind of bump us up a little bit.
Norman 1:52
That’s right and also just a reminder, we did do a schedule change. It is now officially Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Yes, I think that’s it for the housekeeping.
Kelsey 2:05
Yep. Oh, it looks like Alan, saying, Hi. Hello, Alan.
Norman 2:09
Hey Alan. How’s it going? Alright. So I’ve got a special guest today, like I mentioned, and many of you already know him. He’s got a huge podcast out there called Sellar Sessions and, as you know, Sellar Sessions, the host, Danny McMillan. Why did I say Mullan? Danny McMillan. Anyways, you know what, Danny, when I get to talk to you, you’re off right now. But I keep messing that up. I did it on the last podcast as well. But anyway, Danny and I’ve got a really interesting topic today. There’s so many times online sellers find themselves just feeling drained, even depressed and we’ll be diving deep into how to fix the problem and the importance of saying no, especially to what we’re going to be calling these energy vampires, so if you have any questions or comments, just throw them over in the comment area. Sit back, relax and enjoy a cup of coffee and enjoy the show.
Norman 3:12
So now, Danny, how are you sir?
Danny 3:14
I’m good. It’s very hot here in the UK for a change and yeah, it’s just my office or office strike studio. Is blistering hot. So, Yeah, we’ll get the new air cons come tomorrow at the moment. I’ve got this small one and it’s just blowing hot air, but it’s all good. I’ve been looking forward to doing this with you and congratulations on your launch.
Norman 3:37
Thanks a lot and what a great guest to have for the first official launch.
Danny 3:46
Thank you.
Norman 3:47
So I get to switch roles a little bit. I’d like to know a little bit about you now. So why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Danny 3:55
Okay, yes. So my name is Danny McMillan.. I’m the host of Sellar Sessions, the podcast, and also run Seller Sessions live events. We also have the Seller Poll Awards and Branded By Women. I have an agency called DATAbrill, which looks after seven, eight figure sellers with my partner, Ellis Whitehead, Dr. Ellis Whitehead, and also an Amazon seller.
Norman 4:23
Oh, fantastic. So we’re talking about something different today, and probably something most people haven’t even thought of. But when you told me about this, I thought we had to jump all over it so why don’t we just get into that and you tell everybody about the topic that we’re going to be talking about?
Danny 4:43
Yes, I think what happens is entrepreneurs, one of the things is that wetime is a very limited resource. So, but what we do is entrepreneurs, we don’t treat it like we manage our money. We don’t manage our time. We’re quite frivolous with it. But the thing is where you put your energy is really, really important. So an average person says they sleep eight hours a day, you’ve got daily routines like sharing eating stuff. So that takes you up to 11, 12. So basically, before you’ve done anything else, you’ve just given up half your life and the biggest problem I think people face is when you know, they say yes to everything and that drains, the more that comes scattered, the energies become more scattered as well. I think what people miss is a lot of your energy is not just that dialed that that kind of battery life the trains down on a daily basis and then replenishes the next day, you’ve got to look at where does that energy draw from, and that energy can either be plus or minus. So that could be customers, your friends, and your family will either take or add to your energy. So obviously, you want to spend as much time around relationships that lift that energy. So it gives you more energy. So if we take it like the battery goes up instead of being drained. So what I’d like to do is kind of break these into various different groups. There’s so many groups here but I won’t go into absolute graphic detail. But so with most of the stuff coming from your energy comes from all of these relationships So you’ve got to think it’s like, how do these people make you feel? You’ve got to take real stock of it’s about having a really good network of relationships in and around you. Right? So because where you don’t want to be is on that side where you know, they say misery loves company and then before you know it, if your battery’s at 10, and you speak to that the the down there kind of person who’s whose glass is half empty, and that’s in your morning that starts to drain that right down and so unfortunately, you can only help so far with certain people, certain things and everything else, people have to be able to do that themselves. But I think we all struggle, because when you break it down, I’ll give you an example here. I’ve got a list here, your parents, your spouse, children, extended family, close friends, your neighbors, your extended friends, work colleagues, business partners, customers, competition, industry, peer groups, and of course, social media. So if you think you won’t be cross referencing with a lot of these on a daily basis, but there’s a chunk there that you will do, and these are all going to have an impact on your life, your time and how you feel with your well being. So ultimately, it’s about having the best of all these worlds and put them all in together.
Norman 7:48
You know, have you ever heard of Larry Broughton?
Danny 7:50
No, I haven’t.
Norman 7:52
Oh, man. This guy’s brilliant. So he owns a chain of boutique hotels. He was a former Green Beret. He is really a serial entrepreneur. Anyways, he kind of sums up what you’re saying is you have your five day and five year friends and the five minute friends are kind of like those energy drainers. Those are the ones that you meet in the driveway, you say, Hey, how’s it going? Just a small chat, and then you’re off. You go to your next group and the people that you really want to concentrate on are the people that are the five year friends. The people that are positive, they’re similar to you. One of the things that I’ve done earlier on, because I’ve had these vampires throughout my career, and I got stuck with it.
Danny 8:46
You know why? Because you’re an empath. We’ll get into that later. The reason you attract them is because you’re an empath.
Norman 8:52
Interesting, but yeah, you’re right. Yeah, I seem to attract these types of people. But until I learned how to fire my clients and how to fire my friends. I wasn’t able to get out of it so I’m doing better at it. But you’re right, like I do get stuck with these types of people in my life. But just recently, I had somebody that just kept kicking me like it was just kicking, nothing could be right, even though we were doing a great job and then you have to look and just say even with my team, like, we got to get rid of this person. I don’t care what they’re bringing us. We’ve got to let them go.
Danny 9:31
Yes. No, I agree and so should I run through some of these I won’t go through all of them. But I just want to give an I think the best way like this isn’t any relationship advice or anything like this. This is just from my experiences and what you do is you look into your own experiences and then you can reflect off that. So starting with parents, right so very close to home. You can’t control your parents. Some people have amazing relationships with their parents and some people have different and some people don’t and they’re restrained and stuff like that. I mean, I have a relationship with my mom, but my father passed away last year, I didn’t have a relationship with him. I met him when I was about 12, a few times 13 and then again when I was 19, and then I got a phone call last year to say, basically it passed away. But the benefit for the upside of what happened there is that I end up meeting the other side of the family that I hadn’t really had relationships with and we’ve grown a button so that there’s a real positive that came out of that.
Danny 10:39
So some people have difficulties with their parents and the way they feel obliged in some cases to do things for them because in the day you get one mom you get one dad, etc. So it makes it difficult for people to make decisions or hurry up to set some level of boundaries with the level of kindness and compassion involved, it’s stuff that needs to be worked on, if it plays a role in how it’s going to affect your life and your day to day well being at the end of the day, that vacuum around you is where you need to make sure that he’s right for you. I mean, to give you an example, like we move on to our spouses, right, like my wife, I’ve been with my wife, 25 years. But we had our rough times when we lost our children and two of our children a few years ago, we ended up going to marriage guidance for a period of time and it was the best thing that we ever did because we unpacked everything there and I can tell you now, when we separated, you’re trying to get work done if you’re going through that. I’ve never been divorced or anything like that. But as people who have been divorced that’s like a 10 year sorry a 2 year period generally for the grieving process for people to recover. But the point I’m trying to get to is like, how do you maintain these relationships? How do you build on those? If you’ve been in a long term relationship like me and my wife, it comes down to constant communication and even though it’s love, it’s still like business as well, because it still needs to be taken care of at all times, and you need to be on the same path in terms of communication, because I see a lot of entrepreneurs burn themselves out by launching businesses, and they neglect paying attention to their family. So then far, they will lose that relationship and that might become a patent for them. But there’s a kind of a situation there where you can be constantly having an issue with draining especially if you’ve got children involved and you can’t see kids and things like that, that plays a massive role on the weight on people’s shoulders and that’s not stuff if you can avoid that stuff, great. But these have big impacts before again, we open the doors of business.
Norman 13:10
So just quickly shout out to Paul Harvey and also to Tiffany, but Tiffany’s got a question. Alright. So she says, I’m an empath, too. How can we avoid attracting these?
Norman 13:20
I’d like to know that too.
Danny 13:22
I’m gonna go into detail exactly what it is very simple. It’s about setting boundaries, but you need to recognize the signs so I’ll give my interpretation. This is not medical advice. I’m not a psychologist or anything like that. But it’s just from experiences that I had myself where I go, boom, that’s where the barriers come in. But I’ll come to that in a moment. Again, we’ve got children, extended family, close friends, neighbors, people dispute with their neighbors, and they don’t realize the toll that it has on them. We are in dispute with a neighbor. There was a developer next door because of my background and run in a construction business before and dealing with big contractors, I kind of knew what I was dealing with. I’ve seen people go to pieces by living next door to people and it puts so much pressure on their marriages itself and everything kills. They don’t know how to handle it. I mean, the way I dealt with it, it’s just I got my legal guy on it and made it stop and not confronted the person whose job was done. But I didn’t then take that home with me constantly. It was dealt with there and then I’ve seen out much that can be a complete drain on people and their resources because they’re scared to say go and get a legal letter to protect themselves. So to give you a quick example, in the UK, we have a thing called a Party Wall Agreement. If you’re going to start pulling out chimney terrorists on someone’s wall, on the other side, by law, they have to have that Party Wall Agreement. The builder didn’t want to do that, he wanted to cut corners, I’m looking to sell the property to move where I live now and I knew like prevention rather than the cure, and I wouldn’t let it get done and I blocked that legally. But it consumed me, like it was a small period dealt with it, passed it on and that’s another thing that people should have in business as well is that they should have that mechanism where they need to step back. It’s the same with negotiations or contracts and stuff. Sometimes in a tough negotiation, especially if someone’s selling their business, it’s so personal, they’re having an intermediary there to take care of that allows you to step back and make informed decisions.
Norman 15:42
Well, I think one of the things that I’ve learned over the time, especially you’re talking about legal, you can go and you can fight everybody, but you really have to know when and where to spend your money or you’re when you’re doing that because
Norman 15:57
It’s not that important.
Danny 15:58
Yeah, exactly. Oh, I don’t go around. As I said, I’ve got a guy on staff, I’ll tell you where it came from the reason why, I’ll give you an explanation why I’ve got a legal guy that I use all the time, not just for terms and conditions for websites and stuff like that. A few years ago, I was running a construction business. Now when you work with these big contractors, they have a game, it’s called break the contractor. What that means is they try and get small contractors in and then they delay the next term. So it could be 30 days 45, 60, 90 and slowly but surely they stopped paying these people over time. The small businesses go bust because they can’t pay for the time and materials and then what happens is where the break the contractor thing comes in where they fold, these contractors would have done a lot of the work and then what they do is the contractor then brings in someone at the end, so there’s a big budget left because they haven’t spent the money that they should have paid these people. Okay, and then what happens there is that they will get a bonus because they brought in on the budget. That’s a terrible way of treating people and businesses and so what we did is that we had a legal guy that would just literally send out letters two or three times here, The first time, you’re not sleeping at night, but after a while you realize it’s the nature of the business and they’re the tools and mechanics that you got in place, and then you start to put prevention’s in place to work with those kind of people where you can so we’ve got towards the end of the process with that business is that we kind of avoided most of the bigger contracts because it wasn’t worth the headache.
Norman 17:35
Yeah, that’s the thing that wasn’t worth the headache.
Danny 17:38
Yes, oh. The money wasn’t worth it. That’s the thing and the thing people get locked in. Yeah.
Norman 17:43
Yeah, I’ve seen this. Especially there’s one situation I had where it was an employee, actually, Danny, listen to this one. Alright. So I had this employee, I was setting off to go on a first vacation I had in about two years. The guy behind my back and I know, we’re just kind of going off topic here. But behind my back he just approached every one of my clients. He was my sales manager who was making six figures. So he’s making a good salary plus he was getting an override, decided the day that I left to go on my holiday that he was going to go and reach out to everybody and it just happened just before checking my email, I saw want something bounced back to our server. So anyways, what a way to start off. So the guy ended up taking a bunch of our clients and at the end of the day, I ended up going to the lawyer’s office and this would have been a biggie but he said, basically, are you ready to lose about $125,000 before you can even get started? At the end of the day, I could be really pissed and I could be really negative. But it would be a six months to a year long struggle of being absolutely negative. It would eat me up. Something like that you just have to let go and that can go all the way down to the smaller problems as well.
Danny 19:06
Yeah, that makes sense, totally. Kicking through a few more of these on the list, picking the right business partners is really important. Customers, okay, this look at two things is give her a reference to an Amazon customer, and then we can reference a service based business So we’ve customers on Amazon, you see quite a lot of sellers who have been around the block for a while, they know this now. But you’d be surprised how bent out of shape people get when they get a negative review, furious, complaining and wanting to do this. I’ve seen people especially with merchants fulfilled etc. They’re almost provoking the customer. It’s like, if you think about the psychology of the customer, if they wrote a snotty email to you, messy or a bad review or whatever it may be. The worst thing you can do is throw fuel on the fire. That’s what they’re looking for There is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Kill him with kindness. Don’t give an F sorry, because I don’t want you to get powered on. I know I swear on my podcast. Like, don’t worry about it move on, they leave a bad review they do that have a small move on, because that shit will eat you up all day long and you’ll think about I want to get them back and and people are going to be people they are going to do that and you can’t let these things affect you. Because all that’s going to do is mess with the equilibrium every day, you know how difficult it is to remove reviews on Amazon, it is tough I mean, I’ve got a couple of emails that are framed from the reviews I’ve removed or had removed directly from the community because it’s just like a depends on who’s up on the day and who’s willing to do that, but I see that people get really bent out with that and there’s no point, you literally need to move on, you need to have a strategy in place to get more reviews. Or if it is your fault, you look at the product and you fix the product. But ultimately people will vent and sometimes it’s right in these reviews because they’re just having a really bad day and you are their target for that day, unfortunately.
Norman 21:22
Yeah and you can easily give them options. So automatic refund. That’s, I mean, that’s a no brainer, automatic refund and for me, I saw one of my products would be soap, so maybe they just didn’t like the scent. Here, we’ll send you another bar, what would you like? You never know, they might go from a one star to a three star. They might keep it at a one star, but at least you did everything that you could to to bring it up.
Danny 21:48
Yeah, totally and then customers, I think you’ve got to look at as well as that with our agency, we’re selective in terms of who we bring on and I think there’s a misgiving out there that people think that they’re interviewing just you, like, they’ll come to you. They’re interviewing you, carrot and stick, you’re getting their work if you meet these certain requirements, which is right, you need to research and everything else but as an agency, you’ve also got a look, okay? Is this person, can you do this work for that person? Are their demands reasonable? If not, you need to explain that to them. You need to break that down to them and I think what happens is with businesses, people are quickly to sign up their customers, and then they have a nightmare down the line and if you end up with a customer that’s unhappy, or just a customer that you could never please, for instance, they’ve got goals that are not realistic. If you don’t spot that in the beginning, that’s going to have a tremendous impact on your team. Who’s going to want to sit on the client call? No one. Who’s going to want to try and explain to this client why this has worked? That is work and so it’s really important that when you get to a stage, I don’t know. Take the short money off the table. Look at playing the long game and interviewing your customers and look for all those things and whether they’re a fit. I call it a dance partner. The key to get the right dance partner or you will upset the applecart.
Norman 23:15
So what are some of the red flags?
Unknown Speaker 23:18
What are some of the red flags? I think for me some of the red flags are when someone comes to you and they’re saying, the last person’s terrible and they’re on their fifth agency, that’s a red flag. Because I think what you need to do there you need to reflect and say, why am I at five agencies? What am I doing? Is it my expectations? Or do I have extremely poor luck, which doesn’t have any variables at five agencies in two years so you’ll find that maybe the key thing here is that maybe they picked the cheapest one. I don’t know. There are so many different variables. when it comes to the agency stuff. My thing is the red flags are, what are their expectations? So let’s just say they come to you and go, Okay, I’m with this agency now. But I want my cost to be 15%. Like, you’re gonna fix it there and I think what people forget, and I’ve explained this to other agencies when we’ve had conversations. When you run a PPC agency, on a micro level, you’ve got all the different variables on the campaigns So you get a choice there, but you don’t get to choose the brand name. You don’t get to choose the products, you don’t get to choose the category, you don’t get to choose their margin, you don’t get to choose the price point, you don’t get to choose if they got three and a half stars. So I’m not putting that back on the customer. but what I’m saying is that when you look at what you do, what mechanics you do have control of and where you can help is that the best thing I found that you can do is you need to work out whether you can do anything for this client. Is that client going to be? Can you help grow their accounts? Can you show them how it can grow? Or is there only a couple of quick wins? Like, for instance, when we do a discovery call, we’ll do best and worst keywords will show people exactly what it is that can go off and save money that way. So we look for clients that are looking to work on their business in other areas and hand off the PPC and so they’re looking for a trusted source to do that. There are some cases where we don’t always take in one, it’s maintenance. Maybe they’re top market, maybe the kilts really managed really well but they just want to get their time back. But I think the key thing is how they are with you, and you talk to them, do you have a connection with this person because your job is to help their business as much as possible and if you don’t have a connection, it’s going to be very hard to work your ass off to take care of them.
Norman 25:56
For our team, It’s managing expectations. So, if there’s issues that come up, it’s usually due to that. One thing that I hate, and we won’t tolerate is if a customer all of a sudden decides to go off on one of our project managers. Nope, that’s when the relationship stops. I was gonna say I do want to go back to partnerships. That’s a big one. So let’s talk a little bit about that. How do you find the right partner? How do you know when you’re in for trouble? Or what again, going back to red flags?
Danny 26:40
Okay, so it really does vary. I’ve been lucky, on the partner front I have not had a real issue, which I want to get into personality disorders in a bit. I haven’t really had an issue on the partner side. I’ve had it where I bet I’ve worked under tyrants, basically. One in the music industry, one in the tech world, and they can be very, very damaging. But I think with business partners, it’s organic. I think you get to know them. It’s a slow pace. You understand who they are, you learn about each other’s history, because at the end of the day business is like a marriage as well. You’ve got to make it work and if you spend a lot of time with someone, you need to be able to get on with them. So it’s trying to understand their back history, you can only tell a lot by someone by what went on prior to them. The tough one is when you’re dealing with, for better word vectors, habitual liars, basically, but you don’t know. But I think what I want to talk about as well is that when it comes to personality disorders and stuff like that, and dealing with people like that, is that you generally will get a gut feel, but you’ve got to make sure you pay attention to what your gut is saying. So there’s no hard and fast rule with business partners. I think, with me and Ellis, it was very organic. I was over speaking in Germany, we hung out for a week with each other. We got on tremendously well, all week and we then spent six months building relationships and three years down the line and touch, never happened, but we’ve never had a disagreement. We’ve always found the middle ground for everything, he’s like, very defined, like, that’s what you do, this is what I do, and we will help each other and then we advise each other, or what about this and I’m very thoughtful and taking on each other’s considerations. I think that’s really key for a partnership is there’s a balance like friendships, friendships and business partnerships isn’t about power. It’s about balance. It’s about serving the needs of each other basically in that relationship.
Norman 29:01
So let’s get back to the empath side. I’m curious about this. So going back to Tiffany’s question, so how do you avoid attracting them?
Danny 29:12
Right? So let’s just start with going into a couple of personality disorders. This is not me spouting the DSM five or anything and I’m not qualified for this. This is just learning experience and stuff like that. So if we take into consideration you got, say, two main ones who slice you over and the covert narcissist that people have to deal with, he’s known in the BDPs and then you’ve got borderlines and there’s all sorts of stuff going on. The danger with dealing with people like that, is that it leads to endless gaslighting, word seller, blame shifting, deception, lack of accountability. A lot of them conveniently forget their behavior. Oh, I don’t remember, they’ll do something and then don’t remember. Then there’s projection, as well. Now the biggest one that you have to deal with is the coverts. They’re very hard to spot but they’re masters at playing the victim so every situation is everyone else’s fault and they will use people’s empathy as manipulation for their pity so this is a never ending game of circular conversations never getting resolved. They’re also in the main, we’ll generalize it in the main. They’re hypersensitive to perceived criticism as these are what called a narc induced injury because it’s about the false self. So a narcissist has to have a full selves because they see in themselves like a higher power, higher God better than everyone else, and they can’t face their imperfections. So what they do is they create a false self and so what they struggle with and you may not know is that is when they’ve got the full self if they’re reminded of their true self, if they’re reminded of accountability, and then not perfect and stuff like that. This can cause a knock industry and so this can go into sulken or if the other end of this spectrum is that they’re malicious. We don’t get it really in the business world but you’ve got malignant narcissists as well, who can be very very destructive like physically. Whereas what the difference I suppose is that with narcissists like covert ones, you kind of see him coming, you know they are there to dissent like to rise up the dominance hierarchy. I would say what happens with the Covert Narcissist what they do is because they’re covert, what they’re doing is they’re looking up the hierarchy. They don’t like it because really, that’s where they want to be. But their grandiosity is kind of hidden away and then it only comes out in certain quarters because it comes down to shame and so with the shame is that they don’t want people to know who they truly are. So they’re normally very, very difficult to spot now. The thing is with narcs is that they’ll run a system but it depends on the type of relationship that you have. But you’ve got some people call it the honeymoon period. Some people call it the charm period. Some people call it idealization. But there’s a normal another process called devaluation and discard. So, if you’re not aware of their manipulation, and you’re going through an idealization, devaluation, and back forth and back forth these cycles, there’s a thing called a Hoover and Hoover is where they’ll be nice to again in that cycle to draw you back in, but then they’ll evaluate and then might discard it again. So this is a constant realm because what they’re doing is called Narcissistic supply and what Narcissistic supply is where they need the adoration or whatever and in some cases, it can be on a negative side of things because ultimately, their regulation is on feelings and their feelings are regulated by those around them. So they may treat people well, they might treat them bad and then they’ll go through this whole situation. So you have to be a bit careful and the key people that they would target if they can get their hands on them are empaths. Because the traits of an empath, they’re very helpful, considerate and stuff like that. These are perfect as the opposite to what the narcissistic person will need, especially if you look into the covert into things and they are playing the victim, they’re gonna play on your emotions. So that can be working out to be quite destructive if anyone understands what gaslighting and stuff is. Go look it up and read up about it because it’s interesting to have this as a defense mechanism. So going back to Tiff, like I had her on my show a while ago and what she does is she runs a mile from them and the thing is in business, you can’t in life, you can’t always run from them. But if you can spot the signs, it’s how you set the barriers and so you need to be able to set the barriers or boundaries and so what you would do is you’d like you take a look at things in the account you want to look at your previous conversations or recording interactions and like are these relationships balanced? Are they constantly on the take to include emotional favours, money access to network people and stuff like that? Then you got to look at with a narcissist, they’re literally devoid of empathy in most cases. I think it depends if borderlines are slightly different. I’m really at my stereo in terms of the labeling but you can normally spot with the lack of empathy there so like you might have someone who’s always taken off you and then almost snoring when you want to tell them something that’s going on in your life and that they’re just not interested to look away, they jump on their phone, and stuff like that or they’re very busy when you need them for something. Your true sense of relationships becomes balanced, you look after each other. But ultimately what it comes down to is setting boundaries and the quicker you can identify them, the quicker you can set the boundary. Don’t fall for the charm and everything girl, say, Thank you, That’s wonderful. If you do set boundaries, then they are going to get upset, because obviously, they’re going to lose control of the situation, because it’s about power and everything else and all that nonsense. So you’ve got to look at it as what are these people about? Do you understand them? Knowing they’ve got no empathy, a lot of them or narcs are pretty much pathological liars as well and you just got to kind of look at their history, like a lot of them will go through friend cycles, or cycles of humans for over a course of maybe a year that group could change over a period of time, because they’ve worked through the group, people realize what they are, they set the boundary that person to shame, then they move on. Not always the case, like with a covert or grandiose narcissist. They don’t really care at the end of the day. They’re a lot more regulated in terms of their feelings and know what they want so it becomes less of a struggle, and some of them will admit to you and just they don’t care. They don’t care.
Norman 36:28
So that’s when you should pack up and run.
Danny 36:31
Well the thing is, sometimes you can’t just pack up and run. But, again, this goes back to set boundaries. But in some cases, there’s a couple of things that people would do is that, if they’re dealing with, or they feel they know they’re dealing with a narcissist. The thing is, everyone has an element of narcissistic traits. Pride is a narcissistic trait but if you’ve got someone doing word salad, gaslighting and all forms of manipulation, lying and all that kind of stuff, then you’ve got to start to think, Okay, this is a problem. Do you want these kinds of people around you and sometimes you just go no contact and sometimes people use what’s called cranebrook. So they’re looking for regulation of narcissistic supply, whether it’s price, or they’re fishing that there’s a thing called baiting as well, where they’re fishing for an argument. But the thing in between is being indifferent. There’s nothing worse from the narcissist to be ignored, or to be indifferent with them. So instead of reacting to what they’re doing, whether that’s negative or positive, because it doesn’t matter, as long as they get their narcissistic supply, they can have their fun with it, laugh about it, move on to the next person or next party, the supply change because it’s a constant, evolving thing that they need to regulate himself on it on a daily basis.
Norman 38:05
Yeah, I think that takes some skill. So, being able to set those boundaries, because I just know from my end, it’s really hard to go out there and Okay, you identify something, what’s the first thing I say is, let’s give this guy another chance or, you don’t want to be a jerk. I guess sometimes you just have to, with these boundaries, I mean, you’ve got to lay them down like when we fire. I hate saying fire, we’ll use a different term. But anyways, when we let go of a client because they’re being jerks, it does affect you. So, it affects you emotionally and not only that we’re looking at this, we’re talking about these energy suckers, right, these vampires who we’re talking about. So they really do, even if you decide to put up the boundaries, they’re still sucking your energy, one way or the other. Yeah, at least that’s what I find.
Danny 39:02
Yeah. Do you know what I think? If you know and understand, I always say to people, there’s a book out there called 48 Laws of Power. I’ve not read it, but I’ve, I’ve read a synopsis and it is literally a handbook for narcissists. So what I would say to people is read these books and gather this information and understand it as a defense mechanism. Because at the end of the day, if you put it in perspective, if someone’s got a disorder like that, unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about it. But you can’t play their game because if you’re an empath, and you’re not roofless, and a habitual liar, and gaslighting everyone, then the laws, the rules of engagement is different. So the best thing you can do pretty much is block them. I mean in some cases, I’ve got a friend do that problems. You know, just get legal involved and document and then go no contact, there’s a difference. Like, whatever happens if you’ve got no contact with a person like that they’re going to be extremely upset, because they can’t carry on playing the games so there’s other things out there, well, they’ll smear you, they’ll do what’s called flying monkeys where they have a group of people around them to say things and come back. But then you’ve got to be strong enough in yourself and know yourself. Does that make sense? But I think what happens in the very beginning, if you knowledge up and you spot this, that doesn’t really start as I say, coverts are harder to spot. But if you have no knowledge of this, like I noted, loads of people out there, or will play back on the listening will be out there and they go, yeah, that’s really weird that happened. I don’t understand why that and there’s all these little odd things and it really, really does come down to your gut. You know with your gut, whether something’s right or not, but he’s wherever you go with your gut and so you don’t need to know the words and the titles and, and the games and stuff, but you know when something’s not right, and so it’s about pulling back from that and how you treat that. Because ultimately, I think, I can’t remember who said it, but they’re saying it’s like one in 10 people with some level of personality disorder and obviously these are on a spectrum so they can go really bad to mild and stuff. So I think it’s really important just to understand some of the basics and if you are an empath, and you want to carry on being the way you are, and you want to help people and do things like that, but you want to avoid yourself, being around people like that. It’s going to get knowledge up, understand it, and then when you spot that, you can just take a step back, you don’t have to get involved. You don’t have to comment. You don’t have to call them out or anything, you just have to have an understanding of, Ah, that doesn’t make sense nor does that nor does that nor does that. Put that together in the spectrum. Okay, time to take a step back.
Norman 42:14
Yet any good books you could recommend?
Danny 42:18
Let’s have a look at some from my phone.
Norman 42:27
In the meantime, Hey Michelle, haven’t seen in a while.
Danny 42:33
So you got Dark Psychology Secrets and there’s one called and that’s by Diana Brain and then you’ve got Manipulation Secrets, Four books in one, it covers NLP and all that kind of stuff, the dark side of dealing with that. So be careful if you’re at a conference and some taps on the shoulder so there’s like four books in one. There’s another one by Mark Brain which is Manipulation and Persuasion Code.
Norman 43:06
Okay, look at those in the links or comments.
Danny 43:13
If you want to look at things like YouTube, there’s two sides to YouTube. There’s the more qualified into I would call it in terms of what’s going on out there. But then there’s a lot of YouTube channels where, unfortunately, where the people have been affected by narcissism, so they like more like co defendants, they realize what’s happening. They’re like telling their story. But there’s a few places out there, there’s a guy called, whose a psychologist is Richard Grennan. I’m going to have him on the show soon. I think he had an issue with a couple of narcissists and he learned in that word and became a psychologist and he’s obviously helping people. We’re having to deal with that because you can get on on more of a drastic level. Then you’ve actually got two of them out there. There’s Sam Vaknin. He’s actually a narcissist. I think he said he’s an Aussie, I don’t want to call him names, but he has a channel explaining from a narcissist point of view which is a very rare thing. Then there’s one called Knowing the Narcissist. This guy hides behind that he’s got kind of a bit of a creepy voice. What was his name? I think his name is HG Tudor and so when you go there, do put some search terms in, look at gaslighting, look at word salad. Where else is there to give an example
Danny 44:44
Word salad, blame shifting, projection. Look into some of those no contact, grey rock and things like that and just get your more idea, you don’t have to go and get a degree but what it will do is help you navigate in life through the business world, where to step. Does that make sense?
Norman 45:07
Yeah, and it’s gonna give Kelsey a lot of homework.
Norman 45:13
Alright, so as an Amazon seller, I know we’ve already touched on a couple of these things. Yeah. So biggest energy vampires, affecting Amazon sellers and how can you avoid them?
Danny 45:26
Okay, there’s another one that we’ve missed off as well. Let’s talk, social media and competition. Okay, let me give you an example. Now given you a bit of a backstory, when you’ve got a black hater trying to take you out the game, put in 5000, 4000 negative reviews and killing your listing, what does that say to you?
Norman 45:52
When you first see it?
Danny 45:54
What does it say to you? Effectively what you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with someone who whiner, no call, all cost has no empathy. Right? That you seek and destroy. They’re looking to take you out the game and no, at no cost. So, when you’re in a category and you’re dealing with that, but you’re an empath, what are you gonna do? Are you going to go and seek and destroy? Are you going to give up your quality traits to be like that? So that’s another thing that where people get drained because they’re gonna launch in a category, and then they’re attacked by, effectively. You could call it covert narcissism because there’s that grandiosity thing there. They’re attacking, they’ve got no remorse and obviously it’s done to a point where they don’t want to get caught for doing it. But they want to win at all costs. Are you willing to play that game? If not, you’ve got to start selling other products because either you play that game and the other thing with narcissist is sometimes they don’t know they’re going up against because they might go up against the greater, who will then take them out the game but it really does come down to, it’s like that’s another thing that’s going to take and absorb you. The best thing to do in those cases is because you can’t do anything about it. Amazon’s not going to do anything about it, you walk away, you go into another category, you avoid that.
Norman 47:23
You just got the bait.
Danny 47:25
You’ve got, I think, because otherwise imagine you’ve got a really good business and you get taken out by blackadders overnight, and you’re not that way inclined. What are you gonna do? If you’re not willing to go back and fight and you’ve got no proof, step away. That’s all you can do as hard as it is. The other thing I wanted to point out is social media, so dangerous that even Amazon said, Look, we’re on Facebook now. I’ve just done my show earlier on. I put in my time on Facebook, but we do know that with Facebook, generally, there seems to be a higher rate of depression from people dependent on the amount of time that they spend on Facebook. Like the longer they spend on Facebook, the more likely they’re going to be depressed over someone who isn’t. The other thing is, is getting involved with battles on Facebook, not just with trolls, but like reacting to start, like and then having like this 2020 comment thread, and like scrolling every day, it’s like to scroll past it, you just like you see it, leave it, you don’t need to get involved and I think I’ve seen people get like almost hyperventilating because they’re so angry because of the responses they’ve got and he’s like, don’t do it. Because that will eat you up as well and that can happen in some of the Facebook groups. Yeah.
Norman 48:45
Right. Yeah and I have seen it and I have been part of those 20 thread comments..
Danny 48:50
Exactly. Yeah. But where did it get you? It got you nowhere, and it’s hard cuz you got to step away. Other people troll me. I’ve had one guy, I just delete, block. But I had one guy who had a rant at me. But in his rant, he turned around and said, I was on LinkedIn and I listened to your podcast and did da da da and so I decided to leave LinkedIn and come over onto YouTube and hide behind this channel to vent because I don’t have a big enough parables to effectively do that on the LinkedIn channel because you’d be embarrassed of your behavior one and two, you don’t want to say it to my face, but you’re willing to do it covertly. So again, it was stuff like that. What can you do? It’s like you can take it on board, or you can just delete it. If there’s truth in it. You read into it and go, okay, make adjustments. But if there isn’t, and it’s just a rant, how can you take someone seriously in that situation? You know, I know we do when things kick off, I find them on Facebook, if I if there’s like not, if he’s on Facebook, I’ll bring them through messenger and then I’ll have a chat with them and I’m like, come on this break bread. If you’ve got an issue with me this took by, there’s no need to do like a 30 round process. Steve, here, look, Danny troll me. But it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to get into those wars because like, it just comes down to ego in the end, isn’t it? It’s like, you feel righteous to respond and like, then you’ve got a win. But then you could also let go.
Norman 50:39
Right? Yeah, what I’ll do in those types of situations now is I will reach out and try to logically try to figure out where they’re coming from and ask because maybe I am doing something wrong or right. Yeah and then if it’s a crazy answer, that’s where I cut it off. I’m not going to be responding any further, but I have met really great people, because I did reach out to go, Hey, I don’t understand why you said this.
Danny 51:08
Yeah, no, exactly and the thing is you, you are going to say things if you just generally open with people, you are going to say things and then sometimes you don’t always understand the context of it. Like, I don’t sit there and go, I’m going to intentionally upset people. But they might say something where people may take the wrong or they may have got the right interview. I don’t know, maybe someone does get upset because you may pick and choose customers. I’m only picking and choosing customers I want to work with because I look at long term, not short term. I’m not after customers’ money, I’m after results for them and build a long term relationship. That’s why I do it. I never look at the quick money on anything.
Norman 51:49
So are there any apps or software that you can use to kind of streamline this, like if somebody is giving negative comments that it just blocks it off or anything.
Danny 52:00
No, none, I can think of. I mean, we’ve had him in a stream yard, you just block them where you can block them, write outlandish comments and behavior. But again, it’s like, if someone’s going to hide behind something and say that how much should you really affect you just shoot me if they can’t bring themselves to show their face whilst doing it. It’s cowardice.
Norman 52:25
I can agree, it’s 100% with you. It’s trying to at least on my end is trying not to have it affect me, especially if you have like, like I said, I’ll give it that one response. It still affects me. But, once you notice that there are vampire trolls out there. What are the benefits of just cutting these guys off? So let’s go back to that.
Danny 52:51
Okay. So if you’re dealing with someone who’s that why, think about not just the benefits, think about what they do if they’re a pathological liar. Right? If they’re not caught your interest at heart, if they are using forms of manipulating, gaslighting, you know saying no, you’re too sensitive, or I don’t remember how, that wasn’t me. I don’t know what you’re talking about when it’s just happened like five minutes ago, then why would you want that around you? So you can set boundaries, but then the boundaries might breach in some cases and then in worst case scenarios, you have to block them. You just block them all channels, phones, everything just shut down, move on. That won’t obviously make them happy. But the whole point is, that you never invited someone around you to be that way. You know, I mean, just generally healthy people are not that way.
Norman 53:52
As you mentioned, I never heard of it before, but flying monkeys. Yes and I am very close. Yeah, I’m fearful of those flying monkeys because you try to take the high road and do something, and I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had it happen all of a sudden, yeah, this guy’s friends come in and just slaughter you and like, for me, I don’t want to respond back to idiots.
Norman 54:19
Yeah, what do you do about something like that?
Danny 54:22
Awesome to have a think about what they’re saying and then report back in seven months when the narcs burnt through that relationship as well.
Norman 54:30
Interesting.
Danny 54:32
Right. So, because the thing is how long can you keep a mask on for? At some point, the mask slips. So what happens is short term, you deal with that, and then it all blows up and then what do you do you I mean, at some point, they have to show their true colors to those people as well. Then they have to come back not apologize, but they’ll come back maybe later and feel a bit embarrassed about the situation. So, such and such as maybe a little bit overzealous there. Yeah.
Norman 55:03
Interesting. So yeah, so don’t fear the flying monkeys.
Danny 55:07
Well, the only other thing that you do is like you just document everything and you can reach it well. Simple as that. You just, if you’ve got everything documented, then you can go boom, and that’s slander and then at the end of the day, you’ve got to take care of you, like if you are not not asked for that. Right? So that’s the last measurement. But if someone’s making stuff up about you, and being unruly, then what do you do? You have to protect yourself. Coz you didn’t invite them in. Because that’s like, narcissists are predators. They prey on you so they’re looking for vulnerabilities and stuff like that and often they’ll find them within empaths.
Norman 55:51
So Carios says, direct communication boundaries, never discredit your instinct.
Danny 55:57
Exactly. He’s put that down the whole show and he put that down in one sentence.
Norman 56:02
Yep. Perfect. Alright, so we’re coming up to the hour here. If you can tell the audience one thing, one takeaway from this episode, what would it be?
Danny 56:14
One thing I would say is just set boundaries for everything and everyone. Be brave and set boundaries.
Norman 56:23
I think that’s what will title this, Setting Boundaries. That’s it. Yeah. Okay, Danny. Well, it’s the end of the show. Really appreciate you coming on. It’s our first one. It’ll be interesting to look back a year from now. Hopefully I can get up to the 500 episodes you’re up at.
Danny 56:42
Right.
Norman 56:44
So alright, so I hope everyone enjoyed the Facebook Live today. We will be posting the whole thing and along with a bunch of shorter clips on Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy. Please check out the normanfarrar.com website. Geez, sounds like I’m narcissistic. Danny, thanks again for joining us today. You’ve got the best podcast out there, if you don’t know the podcast, you got to check it out, Sellar Sessions.
Danny 57:13
Thank you. If you don’t mind I’ll republish this to my audience as well.
Norman 57:19
Do I mind? Absolutely not.
Danny 57:21
I’m happy to support. You make a great person.
Norman 57:23
Thank you. So stay tuned next week or this Wednesday, we’re going to be having Chris Daigle on and we’re going to be talking about accelerated scaling. So thanks again for watching and enjoy the rest of your day.
