#83: Keys To Scaling Your Business Quickly

Date: December 30 2020

Episode: 83 

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Josh Marsden, Owner of CVO Acceleration, that Helps eCommerce Businesses Scale Their Businesses Using Paid Traffic. 

Subtitle: The ARM5 Formula 

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-83-keys-to-scaling-your-business-quickly-w-josh-marsden/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces  Josh Marsden, Owner of CVO Acceleration, that helps eCommerce businesses scale their businesses using paid traffic.   

Josh Marsden shares his ARM5 Formula to help eCommerce scale their business to 7-8 figures.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• 3:15 : Suspensions on Amazon
• 12:32 : Josh’s Backstory
• 18:19 : The ARM5 Formula
• 20:20 : Don’t Focus on One Platform
• 22:00 :How to Scale Your Business
• 28:09 : Hone your Focus
• 34:27 : Top Niches in 2021 According to Josh
• 39:11 : Pivoting in Business and Career
• 40:51 : How to Acquire Customers
• 44:07 : Tips when Scaling your Business
• 49:11 : Mistakes Sellers Make When Scaling
• 52:47 : Work Life Balance

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Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.  

Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://cvoacceleration.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/cvoacceleration/ 
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/cvo-acceleration/ 
• https://instagram.com/joshuaamarsden
• https://www.arm5formula.co
• Digital Marketer
• The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
• www.arm5formula.com
• ARM5 to 9384448045

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Norman  0:02  

Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.

Norman  0:20  

All right, so we had a bit of a technical glitch, we’re a couple minutes late, hopefully everybody is going to be watching and enjoying this show today. It’s going to be really great. I’m not sure Josh is just running a little bit late. But on today’s show, we’re gonna be talking to the owner of CVO Acceleration, Josh Marsden and he will be talking about scaling your business quickly to seven to eight figures using the ARM5 Formula, so we’ll be talking to him in detail about that. Also Kelsey, you might as well come on.

Kelsey 1:01  

Okay, hello. Hello everyone. Welcome to the show.

Norman  1:04  

So I was just about to say we’re broadcasting to you live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and if you’re watching a replay, you can just skip ahead. If you’re on our profile page, or my profile page, why don’t you head over to our fan page, and check out the whole episodes, highlights, videos, all that good stuff. Now, what are you gonna say Kels? I know what you’re gonna say. Smashing things.

Kelsey 1:30  

That’s right. So smash that like button if you haven’t already. I see we just got to like right there. Awesome. Thank you, Radd, Marina, Marcia, Renee. They’re joining us today. So welcome. Go ahead and put where you’re watching from in the comments.

Norman 1:48

Who’s from sunny Arizona?

Kelsey 1:49

I believe that’s Marcia. Marshalls from Arizona. Yeah, so I actually have one thing I’d want to talk about, to the Lunch with Norm community, the Beard Nation. Hello Latif, welcome. Welcome, and Mark. So this is going to be a little different. If you are in the group, you may have noticed that I made a little video about writing a review for us. So right now, we want to build up that social proof.

Norman  2:18  

What are you doing Kelsey?

Kelsey 2:20  

It takes two minutes, press on the link. It’s in all the bios for today’s episode. If you go to this link, you can write us a review. Hopefully five stars, please.

Norman  2:34  

He’ll go on his hands and knees.

Kelsey 2:39  

But yeah, that would be amazing if you guys can do that. It takes two minutes. If you don’t know how to do it, if you go to the group, I’ve pinned a comment explaining exactly how to do it all the instructions you need and welcome Stephanie. Nice to see you. I think you’re a new face. So welcome. Welcome, welcome. Yeah and then if you haven’t already, just join our Facebook group too. It’s Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. Yeah, so I think that’s it.

Norman  3:09  

Has Josh come?

Kelsey 3:12  

Not yet. He’ll be here shortly.

Norman  3:13  

So this is what I’ve always feared. But we’re not gonna go into the fetal position. So why don’t we do this, we can either talk about a few different things, what’s happening with Amazon? What are the trends for 2021 or we could talk about maybe some influencers or whatever you like. Is there anybody that has any questions about what’s going on right now with the craziness of Amazon. Some of the things that we’ve seen, and you might want to check out, I think it was actually one of our guests that came up and said that in Europe, that people are getting suspended right now. They’re getting that email, you all have seen the email where Amazon just very generically says you’re suspended or suppressed or whatever. They came back and they said that checkout, it was Jana. So check out if your HTML, if you have HTML codes now, the basic HTML code, I don’t know if that’s going to affect it. But if you’re doing anything HTML, remove the code and within either a few minutes up to a day, you’ll see your listing come back. The other thing that is affecting a lot of Amazon right now, are these uppercase characters in your bullets. We’ve had lots of people ask us to say Oh well, I see 1000 other people doing it, everybody my brands doing it. Why should I stop? Because right now, even like we’ve got till January 15 to see, to maximize all the sales that are coming through right now primarily through gift cards. There’s a lot of additional people buying right now through their Christmas or holiday gift cards that they’ve received. So you don’t want to go down. You don’t want to lose sales for a few days, because of your bullets. This is real. They are coming. I don’t know why. But they are taking a stronger approach to this and people have been suspended, not suppressed, suspended and again, you got to try to figure out what you did. Well, just check to see whether it’s your uppercase in your bullets and can you put it? Other people have asked me, okay, a lot of people put it up front, can you bury it somewhere? Can you put it in your titles? Now, the easiest thing to do is go and find the Amazon Style Guide, and just check to see if it’s allowed or not. This is what we’re gonna be focusing a lot on with not only my clients, but also just our own brands, Who was it that came on? It was Colin, Colin Campbell, I think that came on and said that, you when you’re selling a product, just old school marketing works and by old school marketing, I’m talking about the images, we’ve talked plenty about images, or what’s the quality of the images compared to your competitors? Now, I’ll hear people say, Oh well, I’ll put the packaging on I’ll do this. I’ll put a human in there. I’ll put my dog in there. I’ll have it on a white background, because you want to stand out. My competitors are doing it. Same answer. Yeah, that’s great. Go ahead, it’s your risk reward. I don’t want to wake up one day and have my listing suspended or suppressed because of that. Now, with images so far, I haven’t seen anybody get suspended over an image. It’s always just the suppression. Anyways, are there any questions that have come in so far?

Kelsey 7:07  

Yes. So Tony, just wanted to add that Hey, guys, I would also add removing all the images from the bulletin points as well. 

Norman  7:16  

Oh, you nailed it. Right now, if you’re looking, and if you’re checking it out, maybe you haven’t taken a course or maybe in the course they say, Hey, to get people’s attention, add all uppercase, emojis, lightning strikes, dollar signs. Look at the style guides. That’s all I’m saying. Is it worth the risk reward? It’s not and you know what? It’s bloody annoying. These long 500 word or 550 character bullet points. They’re annoying. They used to be because you could keyword stuff. It would be great. You put as much information as you want. Most stats are the majority of people source their product, pre purchase, they source their product on their mobile, who wants to continue to scroll or read all that crap on your mobile phone with a purchase is done, the high majority of purchases are done on your desktop still. So what you’re trying to do is make your products mobile friendly and I don’t know if Victor’s on but I think he was the one that brought that to my attention months ago, just optimizing your images for mobile rather than for desktop. Because that’s where the sourcing is done.

Kelsey 8:40  

Is a checkmark considered an emoji?

Norman  8:43  

I wouldn’t put anything in yet.

Kelsey 8:48  

Yeah. Okay. Marina has a little question. I got an unusual request from someone to buy rates for one of my product images for a book. I have no idea how to reply. I don’t sell this product anymore. But my children are in the image. Any advice? Can I get rich from selling this image?

Norman  9:07  

I don’t know what the product is Marina. But one thing to keep in mind, when you’re talking about your kids or your children, do you want that image out there? If you’re okay with that, then that’s fine. I know lots of people use Facebook and they have their kids’ images everywhere. But you just want to make sure you’re okay with that and will you get rich? No, I don’t think unless it’s really one incredible image with maybe Madonna in the background. I don’t know. But anyways, yeah you can sell off an image. If it’s a product that you’re not selling anymore, and the person actually approached you on this, that’s pretty cool. You could probably make a bit of money with that. I’m not a lawyer. I want to throw that in there as the disclaimer, you may want to talk to people like Rich Goldstein or his staff or Kelly, just to get their view on selling an image and copyrights and transfer of copyright and stuff like that. Okay.

Kelsey 10:20  

So Josh is here. But just to add to that, if you’re joining now, we are looking to get a bunch of reviews for our website or for the podcast. So if you write us a review, we’re gonna go check them, and we’ll read them on the air too, as well, to just kind of show you guys give a little spotlight to the people helping us out. So yeah, we really appreciate it. The links are in the bios and everything and let’s get right to it and welcome Josh.

Norman  10:56  

You’re muted. Still muted.

Josh 11:03  

Still muted?

Norman  11:03  

Oh no. Now you’re there. 

Josh 11:05

Good, good, good. How are you doing?

Norman  11:08  

Well, up until about three seconds ago, I was in the corner in the fetal position, just broadcasting. But yeah, I’m good now. How are you, sir?

Josh 11:21  

I apologize for being a few minutes late. I had a very important meeting that went over right before this. So I apologize.

Norman  11:29  

Hey, no problem at all. We talk about adapting and learning to be entrepreneurs having to do something on a dime. This is something that if we were on a podcast at the very beginning, I literally would have a heart attack, I would be shaking so much right now. But you know what’s really cool is you adapt, you learn, and Hey, look, if somebody late things happen, they might be on a sales call, they might be stuck in traffic, you have to adapt and that’s something that you could bring out in your Amazon listings. What happens if your Amazon listing gets suspended? Do you have a plan, a risk evaluation plan, where you can put it into effect? Anyways, I just wanted to throw that out there. Because we were able to touch on a few other subjects, there’s a couple of questions that we will be answering as well, about what we were talking about just before you came on. But let’s talk about you, who you are, and a little bit of your background.

Josh 12:32  

Sounds good. I’ll tell my story. Well, so I started in entrepreneurship and digital marketing, basically, in late 2012. I was let go of a very big software company in this small business space called Infusionsoft, very disappointed back in late 2012 that that happened. I was 108% to quota the entire year in my sales position. I took a kind of a big risk, you could say kind of going to that company. Well, because in my previous career, I was very stable. I was a manager at a Fortune 500 company and I had won various awards and I’d done well for myself. I really, really built a strong reputation for myself in that career and I’d been there for so long as well. But I switched. I took the gamble and went over to Infusionsoft and then I was like, go and when I was like go after a little bit less than a year. While I was at Infusionsoft, I was talking to small business owners. I was hearing like, their stories, what they’re doing and it just inspired me and it also, helped me see like the opportunities that were out there and then also on top of that, I was also building relationships with some of the Infusionsoft partners as well because half of my job was cultivating those relationships in addition to cultivating relationships with small businesses as well that would gain from using Infusionsoft  and just hearing both those stories really put in seeds in my head that I could do a lot of what I’m hearing and so after I was let go of Infusionsoft, I went ahead and started doing some freelance work right away and this was like my first time making money on my own, essentially not depending on a corporation or a company and I made a little bit of money. I didn’t make a lot but I made a little bit of money in the first 30 days after that event happen and but I had job offers from a few different jobs and there was one job that I did end up taking about a month or so after I was like over Infusionsoft and when I started at that job, I told them up front that I’m the single dad, I’ve got a three year old son, he goes to preschool. I need to pick them up at 5:30, 1 to 3 days a week and they gave me a little bit of a hard time about that and they basically said that they didn’t think that was going to fly they were going to talk to upper management and then I kind of strung along that a little bit just to buy myself something times this way, I couldn’t really figure out what the heck I was gonna do, because it sounded like this wasn’t a good fit for me. But it also gave me stability because it was a good position that had a good salary and a good upside too since it was a sales job too. But at the same time, I didn’t want to sacrifice being a father and missing out on time with my son by working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week for some company as well and so I kind of weighed the two out and and then finally, they gave me an ultimatum about three weeks into it, and said, I had to make a choice and so over the weekend, I made that choice and then I texted them or call them, I can’t remember what it was, late that weekend after they gave me that ultimatum and I told them, that it wasn’t gonna work out, and that was when I made that mental shift to I’m going to dive into really starting a business and really putting all of my attention, my effort, my focus, my energy into building a business, and that was early 2013. Since then, I’ve been able to grow quite a bit as a business owner, and also a marketer. I’ve been very privileged to link up with some really influential smart business owners that taught me a lot over the years. For example, in late 2014, I was one of the first Digital Marketer certified partners, one of the first 12. So I got to spend a lot of intimate time with Ryan Deiss, and Roland Frasier, and also Richard Lindner and they were instrumental in my journey, especially early on in those early stages and since then, I also worked with Ryan Lebec, and his highest level mastermind for a year as well and learned a lot from him. That was a very awesome time, just to learn from him, and how he thinks and about business, about marketing, and also just his ask method methodology and I was a practitioner that, greatly back in 2015-16 and since then I still do implement some of that stuff as well with my company and then also, since then, I’ve been able to publish a few books. I was able to publish Facebook Advertising, Trends and Strategies for eCommerce 2019, then 2020 right here, which made it number one in 11 international markets on day one of release in June of this year. So yeah, so that’s a little bit about myself. Now, what I do is I help eCommerce companies scale to seven, eight figures, using my ARM5 Formula, which is essentially a blueprint that I’ve identified through my work in my agency over the last several years, and I’ve been able to figure out like what eCommerce businesses need to do in order to be able to prepare themselves for the success when it comes to running paid advertising, whether it’s Facebook, or whether it’s Google, or any others out there. So that’s what I do now.

Norman  18:00  

Just a couple things up. Can you hear me? Yeah, just a couple things. You’re not busy?

Josh 18:10  

No, not at all.

Norman  18:12  

Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about ARM5. I’m curious. So can you give us the details on that?

Josh 18:19  

Yeah, of course. So in a sense, some of our biggest successes, we kind of saw, like, there being some common like traits, and our strategy and our process and our approach and those common traits were building authority, really generating reciprocity, really having a strong, consistent effort to monetize and so out of that, I created the ARM5 Formula, which is Authority, Reciprocity, Monetization, the five profit amplifiers and it just came down to really seeing like, what works when it comes to Facebook ads, and Google ads, especially Facebook and as you scale as well. In order to be able to see like the best possible ROAS,  you really have to have like a lot of these pieces in place. Otherwise, you’re stuck around 1.52 as you scale, but if you want to get higher ROAS results, you have to have all these different systems in place, which we’ve identified nine key systems in the ARM5 Formula, and that’s what we help companies implement, both in my coaching business and also in my agency business as well.

Norman  19:33  

Very good. So let’s talk a little bit about the Amazon or eCommerce seller. So a lot of people that are here are Amazon sellers. Very worried about eCom. So switching over to the Shopify store, Colin Campbell was on last on Monday, and he was talking about he pretty much only does eCom stores and he’s got eight, high eight figure businesses through just eCommerce. We had Brenda Ruby, the nine figure business, that was incredible. There’s a lot of people that hear a lot of gurus, so called gurus, say stick to Amazon, and only Amazon, what are your thoughts on that?

Josh 20:20  

So I don’t think it’s necessarily safe to stick to Amazon. I mean, there’s pluses and minuses like for one, focusing on one channel and getting that channel performing at a high level, there’s definitely lots of intelligence in that when it comes to being efficient and focused. However, when you’re on one platform like Amazon, there are risks. Amazon could change your algorithm, there could be competition that comes into the market. There’s definitely risk versus if you were to own your own foundation, by having a direct to consumer brand, in addition to your Amazon store, I feel like that that is like the best approach because Amazon will actually support your direct to consumer brand plus your direct to consumer brand has a lot of potential ROI that it can yield for you as a business owner, if you were to scale it up, and then sell it, it’s a very sellable asset, more so than an Amazon store. So I feel like if you’re gonna do an eCommerce store on Amazon, that you definitely need to build up your own brand as well outside of Amazon, and not just focus solely on Amazon.

Norman  21:36  

Very good. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about scaling up. What can people do, let’s just say across the board, what can people do to get to that seven, eight figure income?

Josh 21:52  

Well, that’s a loaded question.

Norman  21:54  

It is a loaded question. Just very generic.

Josh 21:58  

Honestly, I mean, the key to giving just a seven figures is keeping it simple, really and that’s just having like, one really good funnel, and really honing in on that one funnel and when I say funnel, I’m talking about ads, I’m talking about actually having like a direct response funnel that’s outside of your website, that you’re using to acquire customers. Once you figure out what the best audience is, what the best message is, what the best offer is, and you really hone in on that and then you optimize conversions across the board, that’s where you can scale up to seven figures and then getting its eight figures takes a bit more, but getting an eCom brand to seven figures. That’s really all it takes is just really focusing on just having a really good customer acquisition marketing system to be able to scale your customer acquisition up to that seven figure mark.

Norman  22:55  

Can the average Amazon seller cross the chasm and get to eight figures by themselves?

Josh 23:04  

Like on Amazon only or?

Norman  23:08  

Sorry, let’s say eCom seller regardless, Amazon or on Shopify. I know it’s very easy to take a business and get a million dollars in sales. Crossing the Chasm requires a bunch of extra effort. Can the average person do that by listening to these types of podcasts or just going out taking courses or do they need some form of coaching?

Josh 23:35  

Gotcha, gotcha. Well, I think that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a six figure business owner, seven figure business or even eight figure business owner, you need a coach. I mean, I’ve had coaches most of my entrepreneurial journey over the last nearly eight years now. So I mean, you need someone that can see through the BS, can give you the the tough love communication you need to hear sometimes, can give you the support the soft love communication you need from time to time as well and also someone that really knows how to get to whatever goal you’re trying to get to whether it’s seven or eight or nine figures. I feel like everybody definitely needs a coach. Absolutely and to answer your question directly, I definitely feel like that anybody can scale a business to eight plus figures and that’s not just because people can really focus on business and accomplish whatever they want. I just am very much of the mindset that there are no limits, that the limits are only something that you tell yourself and that anybody can accomplish anything if they just put their mind to it and so if someone says, I’m going to build an eight figure business, and they really commit to it, and they really focus in on that and all their efforts, all their decisions are focusing on that, then absolutely, it can definitely happen.

Norman  24:58  

Okay. Josh one second, coffee time.

Josh 25:03  

Sounds good to me.

Norman  25:04  

It has to happen. I gotta have my Kona. There we go.

Josh 25:08  

I wish mine was still warm. Mine’s cold now.

Norman  25:10  

Mine’s hot now.

Josh 25:11  

I need to get one of those warmers like I know in the Apple Store, they sell those warmers that you could put your coffee mug on and warm up your coffee. I really need to get one of those.

Norman  25:22  

Well brand it with Lunch with Norm, how does that?

Josh 25:26  

That’s huge. That would be really good swag that people would buy.

Norman  25:31  

By the way, we do have Lunch with Norm merchandise on the website. Not that I’m saying anything here. So, again, this is a really tough topic, without knowing the brand without knowing the competition, the price. You search volume, it’s hard to talk about scaling. But if we just took this as a very broad subject, and said we’ve got a bunch of people that are listening, what can we do to help scale our business right now?

Josh 26:10  

Well.

Norman  26:11  

You could say the funnel. I understand that. 

Josh 26:14  

Because like, if you don’t have that in place yet, that’s all you need to focus on. Just focus on that, keep it simple and just focus on that. If you have that already in place, then you just need to keep scaling it, you just need to find those little hinges, swing big doors in that specific system, whether it’s getting better performance out of your ads. Whether it’s scaling up your ad account using scaling techniques, or whether it’s optimizing conversions in your funnel, but that’s where the work lies in order to get up to that seven plus figures a year in your eCom brand.

Norman  26:51  

Right. One of the things that we do to try to help our VAs or our contractors is we train them. So they’re expected once a day, or over a period of five days, put in five hours worth of training and so for us, you mentioned a Digital Marketer, what an incredible program that you can have. They can select whatever they want, we’re paying for everything and then that’s one way, if you can have your team become experts in different areas, and then provide and not be afraid of getting screamed at. We have our five strengths, five weaknesses and successes for the week, and how can that be applied to better the company? These are all things, these are little bumps that you can do to really grow your company and I don’t know if you’ve implemented that. But my next question is, like what do you think about signing up? It sounds a little expensive. When you go to a company like a Digital Marketer, you can find these places like Social Media Examiner, for example, that’s another one you subscribe to. But would you do something like that? Is that something that you believe in?

Josh 28:09  

Oh, absolutely. I mean, back in I think it was either late 2013, early 2014, after I had been an entrepreneur and owning my own agency, and basically doing everything in my agency, sales, fulfillment, you name it. I really, really started to hone in on what I wanted to focus on. Because at first, in Infusionsoft, specialists essentially. I was helping companies automate, but I was also helping them implement marketing. So I was doing both, I wasn’t just doing marketing, I was also helping them automate and sometimes, a company would come to me back then and they’d tell me some crazy process or crazy system that they wanted to have built into their business using Infusionsoft and I would have to like problem solve, and think through it and really figure it out and then I would have to build it myself, so it was a different set of muscles. What I love though, was I loved the marketing stuff I was doing back then, like I loved being able to see results coming in for clients and that’s what gave me the most excitement at that point in my journey and I think that just in introspective, I feel like that the reason why I had such excitement, such a passion for that was because I’ve always been in some sort of performance based occupation my entire life, usually sales, and I’ve also been an athlete as well. So I really love generating results and so when I saw that, I was like, you know what, that’s the direction I want to go and I don’t want to automate businesses. That’s not what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is I’m interested in helping companies get results and so that led me into really working on myself as a marketer and picking up books by Dan Kennedy and going to resources online, reading blogs, listening to podcasts, and I don’t know where I am somehow got targeted, but Digital Marketer somehow found me and so I came into their funnel and I signed up into their base level lab at that point in time this is late 2013 to early 2014 and I just dove into it. I mean, I 110% believe that if anybody wants to get better at marketing, that is an incredible resource to really tap into, it’s totally worth every single penny. I mean, I can’t tell you how much that’s changed my life has changed my business success that one first domino, because if I didn’t take that, then I wouldn’t have gotten better at marketing. I wouldn’t have become a certified partner with Digital Marketer. I wouldn’t have built all these relationships that I’ve built since then that was from that first domino, like, none of that would have happened and nowadays, like if someone were to go and join Digital Marketer lab now, it’s a much more sophisticated program. So it’s even better. They’ve got all sorts of different, courses, execution plans, guides, templates, you name it in their back end, and their community is also much larger too, which is great as an entrepreneur, since entrepreneurship is a lonely, lonely path, unless you take it upon yourself to actually network and reach out and create relationships with other people and that is a shortcut to doing so..

Norman  31:25  

Yeah, we don’t accept any affiliate fees on the podcast, or we’re not getting any discounts. So when we’re talking about Digital Marketer, we’re not promoting it. However, check it out, you can get into, I’m not sure what the lowest is. But you can get into these labs, you can get individual labs, so you can just get them one offs. But for 95 bucks a month, you can get some incredible training, really incredible training and the templates that you were just talking about. So not only does it allow you for example, blog writing and copywriting. So we had my son, take a look at it, not that Kelsey, but Hayden went on and he checked that out and it’s tremendous help for 95 bucks. It’s crazy you can also go to lrn.linkedin.com. So that used to be Linda, there’s all the dummies out there, lrn L R N, I think this is the other ones, there’s all sorts of them. But you can go out and find incredible tutorials that give you a bit of information. Now the other thing, like for me, I don’t know about you. But when I get involved in a business, and I’m looking to either invest or go forward with one, it’s got to have a couple things. It’s got to have great people. It’s got to be automated and scalable and I love it if it has a recurring model. So if it’s soap, if it’s candles, whatever it is, I love recurring income. But if I can’t turn that, and if I can’t get that, let’s say the sales are 50 grand, if I’m trying to get that those sales up to 100,000, there are going to be some hurdles and unless you start thinking about it right now and again, my the book that changed my life, which led to going to their academy was Michael Gerber’s The E Myth, which taught me about systemization, and how to implement them into my businesses and people will ask, how do you have these multiple different things out on the go? It’s all based on that book. It’s just based on that simple book. 

Josh 33:46

It’s a good book. 

Norman 33:47

Yeah, it’s a good book, and the Academy was even much better. But again, that’s investing time, right? Investing money, and investing time and a lot of people aren’t willing to do that. So they’ll just sit there and just what do they call it when a storm just circles over? Doesn’t move on. Anyways, you know what I mean. But any other things that you look forward to so I’ve told you a little bit about what I’m looking at. What else would you look at a business? Oh, one person said here. I just saw the niches. What type of niches do you think are going to explode over the next year?

Josh 34:27  

That’s a good question. I think that’s the first one that really comes to mind is the cannabis CBD sector. I think that will definitely explode, especially with legalization, and now about to really take place in the United States over the next 12 months and besides that, I mean, I think that some of the standard kind of markets niches that have done well traditionally, like beauty, health that’s always going to be strong and I don’t see that changing at all whatsoever. eCommerce obviously, in 2020, the pandemic, which has not been positive overall, but for eCommerce it has been and eCommerce has been booming. I can remember the exact statistic, but the adoption rate of eCommerce has leaped like three to five years, I believe it was into the future because of what’s happened in 2020. Now eCommerce is even more robust, versus the way it was a year ago in 2019. So I feel like that’s going to continue as well and 2021. But yeah, I mean, besides that, I think we’re moving more towards a peer to peer economy more and more, you’ve got more eCommerce businesses obviously going live and when I say eCommerce, not just physical products, but also digital info products as well, I think those are going to continue to grow. People buy from people and also on top of that, you have cryptocurrency growing, and that’s only going to continue in my opinion as well, with the main cryptocurrencies, not the smaller ones and I think that’s just showing like that society itself is just moving more towards a pure, pure economy, not a big business to consumer economy. I think that that’s gonna be less and less and less, especially with the growth of small business and the growth of eCommerce.

Norman  36:25  

I was talking to a group the other day, and a lady came on, and she was talking about a platform that doesn’t normally come up, and how she just killed it on this platform and that’s Etsy. So you talk about your peer to peer and it used to be all personalized your handmade stuff. Now, you can sell on that platform, and you don’t have to have handmade products and she was making a pretty good living off of Etsy and the other one, I know Victor is gonna say, Oh, he’s talking about this again, but eBay, I thought eBay, I was on it. I was part of it years ago, I got off of it, it sucked and then I went to their head office and their business development guy was talking to a group of us, and my mouth dropped and we ended up taking three products that were hazmat, like just dead on Amazon three times, put it over on on eBay, and turn those three into $150,000 a month product. So not bad sales.

Josh 37:38  

Yeah, that’s really good.

Norman  37:41  

Again, the part of this podcast is about The Rise of the Micro Brands and that’s that peer to peer. You said, this was interesting. I’m sitting back listening to your intro, and you were talking about, Oh in 2016 I did this, listen, 2016, you were able to go in, become an expert and now be like the one of the top eCommerce people out there. We’re talking 2016 and in between that, building up your career. I mean, this is the only business in the world and I do not promote getting rich quick, this is a hard business. But if you study it, and we talk about crossing the chasm, if you can understand that, and just put all these things into place, have a strategy. You can’t do that with any other business like this for no money, really no money, except for maybe a little bit of cash flow for inventory and a bit of marketing. But this is what I love about this business and this is really why I also wanted you because of what you’ve been able to do with your career over a very short period of time. Like 2016, it’s nothing four years ago. I know that you’ve had tons of experience prior to that too.

Josh 39:11  

Well, no. You bring up a strong point, because in business in my opinion, you constantly evolve, you’re constantly pivoting and I was pivoting, I’ve pivoted number a number of times since 2013 when I really got started and it was about, going into 2017 when I was like, Okay, I’m just going to focus on eCommerce. Because prior to that, I was working with all sorts of different companies, like I used to tell people on the phone when I connected with them, and they were talking to me about doing business with me. I used to tell him that I’m a vertical agnostic, where I mean that I can help just about anybody because I know the process of building a marketing strategy, and I know how to implement it as well, with my company and my system and my processes and my team. So yeah, I mean since 2016, I really made a concentrated effort to really focus on eCommerce and I appreciate you saying that. I’ve definitely put lots of long hours, lots of hard work into getting to where I’m at right now and I’m not done either. I’ve got a lot ahead of me as well.

Norman  40:13  

I’m sure you do. Hey Kels? I’m pretty sure there’s a few questions in here.

Kelsey 40:20  

Yeah, we should do some. Let me just.

Josh 40:24  

By the way, I haven’t used Stream Yard before, but the fact that we just cut in your son, like that and there’s like three people here and it’s incredible. I’m just amazed by technology.

Norman  40:35  

Oh, yeah. It’s just continuing, especially streaming platforms, they’re continuing to get better all the time.

Josh 40:42  

Yeah. Nice. 

Kelsey 40:44  

Alright. So our question from Radd. Do you sell your product through social media or brand influencers and how do you acquire your customers?

Josh 40:52  

Okay, that’s a good question. So yeah, definitely  social media, social media ads, or PPC ads, just depends on the market that you’re going after with your product. You have to do a decent amount of research on the product and on the market and on the competitors in that market as well to really come up with the right plan and to really identify what’s the best direction to initially go into. Should you focus on social media and social media ads? Or should you focus on PPC like Google, Bing, etc. Because there’s products and markets are found in different places and have different degrees of traction, between like different platforms out there. As far as influencers, influencers are definitely a good channel to go into, but they’re very hit or miss. They’re very, like, risky in some ways. So I always recommend to companies that they really focus more so on paid advertising, first and foremost, because in my opinion, paid advertising is like the number one traffic channel to focus on initially in a business. If you have the resources, if you don’t, then obviously, you have to focus on stuff that you can put your time into instead of money into. But, it doesn’t take a lot to start with paid advertising, and to get that traction with paid advertising and it is the number one traffic source out there. When it comes to control versus organic, or just social media or influencers, paid traffic, you pay for how much traffic you get and you can turn the dial and get even more if you want to when you’re ready when your numbers are working out. So I definitely recommend using social media ads, or PPC ads, depending on what you’re trying to sell and where your markets are.

Norman  42:39  

Alright.

Kelsey 42:42  

Let’s see another one. This is from Sajad. Will it be a wise decision to move towards Walmart in the year 2021?

Josh 42:53  

I don’t know if that’s the best question for me, just because I don’t really focus on Walmart or Amazon. Norm probably could answer this better than me. But I do feel like it just based on the trends. Over the last year, Walmart’s really made big strides and being a viable competitor to Amazon, Amazon is still the king but Walmart’s definitely making like a name for themselves when it comes to eCommerce.

Norman  43:17  

Yeah, I’d be interested to see what type of market share they have or grabbed this year. That’s just enough. For me, I don’t want to be a one legged stool. So if you can get into a Walmart play, or if you can go into Etsy or if you can go into all these others or just have a Shopify store. Hey, look, it’s better than being one legged.

Josh 43:39  

Yep, for sure. 

Kelsey 43:41  

Okay, we have one more question or is more of a statement, but I think we can spend a question after this from Darwin. I made a mistake on scaling too fast, I grew my brand too fast with new products, ran into inventory problems, low IPI score due to out of stock grades, low cash, finally crawling out and keeping up. So I think are there any mistakes when you’re scaling to look out for especially if this is your first time doing it?

Josh 44:07  

Yeah, first off, that’s definitely unfortunate Darwin. Hopefully I said that, right because it looks like you really did a great job of getting that traction, but then operationally, you weren’t able to predict where your business would be once you got to a certain point with your sales. I would say, I’m not an operations guy, I’m more of a marketer and a sales guy. However, I think that’s when it comes to being able to prevent that from happening and prevent that from being a challenge and a problem in a business, you just have to constantly be making projections on ad spend, traffic, number of sales based on predictability, based on your numbers and your eCommerce business and then obviously, looking at your inventory flow as well to make sure that you have the inventory at all times, that correlates with your prediction when it comes to your sales, because once you do have some traction, you have numbers, and you can project where your sales is going to be two weeks, 30 days, etc. So this way you can make sure you have the inventory in place. It’s a very delicate process, it gets exciting when things are working, and you want to scale and then you apply some scaling techniques, and all of a sudden, you see a massive spike in sales, but you have to have the operational strength and stability to be able to handle that. So, it’s unfortunate that it happened. But hey, it’s a good lesson and now, moving forward, you know how to prevent that from happening in the future.

Norman  45:44  

Yeah, I’d like to add that cash flow is so important and when you come out of it, you could get really excited, especially with Amazon, there’s so many areas or categories you get into, but if you just launch too quick, what ends up happening is you don’t have the chance to scale unless you have some really great funds behind you. But cash flow is tough and one of the things that I recommend Tim Francis has a course, he was on one of the podcasts called Know your Numbers, check it out, it’s not expensive, we do have a discount for the group. So it takes like $500 off or something. But it’s an 8 or 14 hour course on just understanding numbers and moving forward, and he does it in a way where it’s not boring. So anyways, that’s one thing that I could recommend and then exactly like you said, Well actually, the other thing to this is if you launch too quickly, I tell my clients, I don’t want five products to launch. I want one product to launch to see if my strategies are working and if you launch 5, 10 products, and your strategy sucks, Well, guess what? You spend all that time having a great product, maybe having an okay description, spending all this money on PPC because you don’t have one honed in, they all collapse. So that’s something to think about as well. I know it’s really, you want to get out there and get 10 products up. But a lot of times it’s not the best decision.

Josh 47:21  

Yeah, you don’t need to overcomplicate the path to success. You want to keep it as simple as possible to get to that successful point.

Norman  47:29  

Yeah. So Kels, I noticed that there was a question from Michael Webster from the group.

Kelsey 47:38  

Michael Webster, let me see. I might not have showed up yet. 

Norman  47:43  

No, this is something you sent over to me. You just said Mike Webster has a question. I have a brand which I think resonates with parents, what is the solid formula to promote scale the brand?

Josh 47:58  

The ARM5 Formula.

Norman 48:00

There we go. 

Josh 48:01

I mean, he asked formula. So I mean, but again, it comes down to so one of the key systems of the ARM5 Formula is that customer acquisition process and it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, whether you’re selling a kid’s product, or whether you’re selling flowers, it doesn’t matter, you just really need to identify why people buy your product, and what marketing messaging works through testing and then have a really good funnel with good ads, having those hooks, and a good sales page with your core offer, your flagship product, and making sure that that sales page is consistent and aligned with the ad messaging so this way, when people click on the ad, go to the sales page, the messaging is consistent. They know why they’re there, they see it in the messaging, and it encourages them to move forward. So it’s really just about really creating, like a good solid marketing message that people resonate with, and then finding those people as well do your targeting.

Norman  49:03  

Great. What about mistakes? What mistakes do you see sellers making when scaling?

Josh 49:13  

There’s a number of different mistakes that I’ve seen. For one, just knowing your numbers, you have to know what your range is when it comes to KPIs and acquiring customers like what can you afford to pay? What’s your breakeven and what’s your ideal profit CPA, you also have to have the knowledge, likeI’ve noticed with a lot of people in my coaching business that they join because they are lacking the knowledge of being able to market and advertise effectively and so they want to shortcut the process of learning and getting to that successful result by working with me and applying my methodology as well and then besides that, just operationally to like, you have to really have like the good team in place to be able to really be able to scale. You have to have a good ads manager, you have to have a good marketer on the back end, when it comes to your copywriting, when it comes to your design, your implementation, or you have to learn those skills yourself, because that could also restrict your ability to scale your business as well. So, I would say like, those are some of the mistakes that I’ve seen when it comes to scaling, especially over the last six to 12 months.

Norman  50:38  

Yeah, and when you’re getting those people, those experts, you have to have the proper training. If you don’t have the proper training, they’re either gonna get frustrated, or you’re gonna get frustrated and then you have to do the whole hiring process all over again. It’s really tough not to micromanage but don’t micromanage. That’s the biggest thing I can say is don’t micromanage people, let them make their own decisions.

Josh 51:06  

Yeah, and whatever process you’re following, trust that process, follow through with that process, like a lot of times, and I’ve been guilty of this too in my journey, but a lot of times people kind of bounce around from opportunity to opportunity to opportunity, and it doesn’t get them very far. If they were just focusing on that one opportunity, and really follow through with that commitment that opportunity, that’s where they’re going to be able to see massive results and instead of jumping around from decision to decision to decision, trying to get their business to where they want it to be. It’s not that complex, it could be very, very simple. Like, if someone joins my ARM5 Formula Accelerator, and they put in the work, and they implement, and they lean on me for support, and they get my help, which I give him basically over the shoulder help, whether it’s technical, or whether it’s coaching, they’ll be able to get the results out of the program, they’ll be able to at least double their business in 12 months. But if someone joins the program doesn’t have that mindset and has one foot in one foot out, then you’re not really invested into that and you don’t have the right mindset to be able to grow your business.

Norman  52:15  

Right. Action oriented? 

Josh 52:19  

Yep and committed.

Norman  52:20  

Yeah, for sure. Alright Kelsey, any other questions?

Kelsey 52:23  

So Egle had a comment about the work life balance. So to balance life and work while having kids too, store four days a week because you won’t rest on the weekends, because you want to spend time with your kids. This realization struck me after being an entrepreneur for 15 plus years. So what is your experience balancing or work life situation?

Josh 52:47

Yeah, this is tough cuz I always feel, I still feel more guilty earlier when he was younger. Now he’s 11. But I’ve always felt kind of guilty working when my son’s around, my son’s home after school, for example. When he was younger, not me. I guess I was younger, too. But anyway, when he was younger, I was very good at cutting myself off, around 5 or 6pm. So I could just spend time with him and now that he’s older, he’s a little more independent, and he does his own thing, but he still values time with me, like last night, for example, I’ve finally just shut down and disconnected from work and stop thinking about it, which is hard, it’s really hard for me to do and I spent hours playing video games with him and watching him get so frustrated every time he lost and just laughing. But anyway, it’s tough. It’s a tough juggling act, trying to be the best parent you can be and trying to be there for your kid or kids and at the same time, really focusing in on your business and your goals and what you want to accomplish, especially when you’re intense and you’re driven and you’re really focused on it. The best thing I can say is that, in my experience, there is no such thing as work life balance. It’s more work life integration and you have to accept the fact that the work is always going to be a part of your life, and yes, there are definitely some moments where you need to completely turn that off and focus on your kids, but it’s never going to be perfect, it’s never going to be truly segmented. It’s always going to be integrated on some level as a business owner and it’s about quality times, not about quantity time. It’s about getting good, solid quality time with your kids as opposed to lots of time with your kids, in my opinion as well.

Norman  54:58  

Right. Yeah, that can be really tough. You see this with a lot of entrepreneurs and sorry, one sec. Of course that happens but you do get caught up, you’re passionate about your business, you’re trying to grow your business, and Oh, I just have to do this and I’ll be with you. I just have to do this and sometimes it just hits you in the head going, Oh I just blew off my kid. No, I gotta stop now. Yeah, I gotta stop now. Like, for us anyways, we built that stop usually around sports. During the day, it was really tough, because I was working and, but when it came to sports, that’s when we drove out, we stopped, we got Kelsey double cheeseburgers, sharing our McDonald’s experience many times. But you do have to take that break, and we use something, that quality. I couldn’t give quantity, but I could certainly give quality and when we went on vacation, I mean we went on vacation, we had a great time, we do all sorts of things and that’s where it was not nothing, we had the systems in place where people would take care of 100% of everything. The only time I’d get a call is if it was absolutely urgent and that never happened. So, that’s the other beautiful part of having SOPs or systems in place where you can go and enjoy that time with your family.

Josh 56:37  

Yeah, definitely. I mean, over the last few years, things have been fairly systematized in my business where I’ve been able to take a week long vacation if I need to. Sometimes, like last summer, one of my best memories of 2019 was I went out to Venice, California for two weeks. The first week, I was there partially for business, I was there for a mastermind, and then my son flew in for the second week, and then that second week, I didn’t work at all, like I completely disconnected and we had some incredible times, at the beach, going to different places around LA and Venice, and just having a blast and it was cool, it was really cool to have that time and I couldn’t have had that time if I didn’t have a team that I could depend on, and also processes that I had built, or my team had built to be able to run the business sustainably without me.

Norman  57:38  

So Kelsey, we’re running up to the hour. Are there any other questions?

Kelsey 57:42  

There are a couple Amazon focused questions, so I’m not sure. One, I think it’s pretty general that sellers would want to know. Is Amazon going to lift the inventory restock restrictions?

Norman  57:59  

So I think it’ll be a long time before you see that and you have to live with it. So your inventory strategy just has to change and the way that you send in your inventory, and just monitoring. I think if as long as you’re monitoring the inventory, and it’s very simple, like if you’ve got the 200 unit restriction, and you start getting sales, rebates or influencers or wherever, social media, whatever you do to get sales, you’re gonna see the restrictions start to move up very quickly. So you can get that 200 to 300 to 500 to 70 very quickly. The trick is getting Amazon the product to Amazon, so you can add it to inventory. So just kind of keep that in mind that if you have to do two or three or four or five different shipping plans every other day, take a look at that, but we can definitely dig into that a little bit deeper. But I think they’re here to stay for a while.

Kelsey 59:09  

Okay, so I believe that’s all the time we have for now. Okay, we can start wrapping up.

Norman  59:18  

But I do have one more question for Josh. 

Josh 59:22

Yeah, go ahead Norm.

Norman 59:23

What’s your passion for 2021?

Josh 59:26  

Simple. Helping brands scale, whether it’s brands in my coaching business or brands that I own. That’s all I’m focused on in 2021. That and just taking the next step and my own personal kind of evolution, you could say, and just continuing to work on myself as well.

Norman  59:47  

Very good. So people wanted to get a hold of you for either of your courses. What’s the course called? ARM5.

Josh 59:56  

Yeah, and I wouldn’t call it a course, it’s more of a mentorship if anything. There is definitely like a course type element to it. But it’s more of a mentorship program. But yeah, my 12 month mentorship program is called the ARM5 Formula Accelerator, people can find out more about it by texting ARM5 to 9384448045, or going to www.arm5formula.com. We have a basic landing page there right now and we’ll have like an actual full pledge kind of personal branding website very soon live for 2021. But the fastest way to find out more if you really want to scale your brand up to seven, eight figures as fast as possible, and you feel like that you need some help with your marketing, your advertising and really shortcutting the process that I would just recommend texting ARM5 to 9384448045 and I did also mentioned to you privately that if anybody did book a call with me in the first week of 2021 from this, that I would give them a $4,000 discount for the program if they decide to sign up as long as they booked a call during the first week of 2021.

Norman  1:01:13  

Very good. Alright, sir. Well, thank you so much. You know what? I hope I can get you on a few more times. There’s so much to talk about. Yeah, we just got to sync up our schedules. Right?

Josh 1:01:27  

Totally, totally and I’ll be working with you very soon as well, on the Amazon side with several brands and by Cohn.

Norman  1:01:33  

Perfect. Alright Josh. Well, thanks a lot for coming on.

Josh 1:01:37  

Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

Norman 1:01:38

Alright. We’ll see you later. 

Josh  1:01:40

Okay, bye.

Norman 1:01:41  

Alright everybody. So thanks  a lot for joining us today. Kelsey, where are you?

Kelsey 1:01:48  

Hello.

Norman  1:01:51  

See I told you. Josh is one of the like, we’ve had some incredible guests in 2020. Josh is one of these guys that’s so humble and if you go and check out that course, or the mentoring program, you’re only going to grow. It’s such a cool program. Knowing Josh, and knowing what he can do for companies. But anyways, he’s a solid guy. Alright. So what do you have to say? 

Kelsey 1:02:19  

Alright. So I know we talked, you guys had a bunch of different recommendations for books and so yesterday, I actually made a little forum on our group page to go over any books that any of our members loved that changed the way they looked at their business. So if you guys go to the Facebook group, you’ll be able to find a full list. I think we have like about 15 to 20 books from all of our different members. They’re recommending these different books. So I think it’s a great resource. 

Norman  1:02:55  

Yeah. I took a look. There’s some great books there.

Kelsey 1:02:57  

Yeah, like Profit First, The E Myth, tons of different things. But I think Marina, she put about five or six that was awesome to see,

Norman  1:03:05  

You know who we should ask about that to Carlo, send an email to Carlos Alvarez, and ask him what his five favorite books are. He’s got a book club and in case you’re interested, we can actually post that link for his book club, which is fantastic. Alright. So for Friday, yes, we’re gonna be doing this Friday on New Year or January 1st and yeah, I suckered one of my one of my guys, Afolabi. A lot of you guys already know him. But he’s the president of Honu Worldwide to come on and we’re going to be talking about something really cool and if you don’t know about HTS codes, get on, share this link. Because HTS codes, if you do it properly, will save you tons of money. If you do it wrong, you could pay through the nose. So Afolabi is going to go through very specific detailed information about what to look for, how to do it, and what you might be missing out on. So Afolabi Oyerokun is going to be on Friday, and if he’s listening, thanks. It was hard to do for somebody for New Year’s Day. 

Kelsey 1:04:25

You found someone.

Norman  1:04:26  

Yes, we did.

Norman  1:04:28  

Alright. So I think that’s it. We’re done.

Kelsey 1:04:32

So yeah, if you guys again, if you guys wouldn’t mind writing a review on Apple podcast, that would be amazing. We’ll block off a little time and share a review every day, maybe into the New Year and also, we’re making new templates. So if you guys look today on YouTube, you’ll see a brand new template for today’s episode, so let us know what you think and yeah, Happy New Years everyone. We’ll see you in 2021.

Norman  1:05:00  

Yes. Happy 2021. So remember, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon, Eastern Standard Time to tune in to Lunch with Norm. Thanks for watching and enjoy the rest of your day.