Mastering E-Commerce: Entrepreneurship & Branding | Neil Twa

What does it take to transform a blue-collar upbringing into e-commerce success? Join us on Small Business Pivots as we uncover Neil's incredible journey from Oregon to building multiple seven-figure e-commerce brands. Neil’s story is filled with invaluable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs, including tips on what products to sell, key metrics to focus on, and the importance of planning for an eventual business sale. Learn how his father’s tireless work ethic and his entrepreneurial uncle’s influence played pivotal roles in shaping his business philosophy.

From business development to affiliate marketing, Neil shares his transition into the world of e-commerce. Partnering with a complementary skill set, he launched successful private label brands on Amazon, achieving a seven-figure brand by 2014. As they scaled, Neil and his team developed robust systems, processes, and software to support their operations and assist others in replicating their success. Discover Neil’s strategies for acquisitions and growth, emphasizing the goal of building saleable assets within three to five years, and the impactful role of Patriot Growth Capital in training veterans to manage these businesses.

In the final segments, we delve into what makes an effective e-commerce CEO and how to build emotional connectivity through branding. Neil explores the DISC personality assessment and how certain traits contribute to successful leadership. We discuss the power of brand narratives in fostering customer loyalty and the empowering journey from active CEO to achieving automated income through delegation. Tune in for a compelling episode filled with actionable advice, inspiring stories, and a focus on both personal and professional growth.


Neil Twa: CEO / Voltage Digital Marketing

FREE BOOK OFFER: Claim 1 of 10 FREE Copies from this episode, text 1-417-695-5479, code MORRISONFBA

Website: https://www.voltagedm.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neiltwa/

Podcast: https://www.voltagedm.com/podcasts

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Chapters

• 0:00 E-Commerce Entrepreneurship and Brand Building
• 11:29 Scaling E-Commerce Business Growth
• 14:10 E-Commerce Acquisition Strategy and Growth
• 17:30 CEO Development in E-Commerce
• 21:44 Building Emotional Connectivity Through Branding
• 28:35 Empowerment and Growth Through Delegation
• 33:24 Mindset and Financial Growth Journey

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey listeners, before we dive into today's episode, I've got some exciting news. Our guest is generously giving away 10 free copies of their best-selling book. So stick around until the end of the episode to find out how you can get your hands on one. Now let's get into our show. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have a very special guest from around the world, almost not too far from me, but I know no one can introduce themselves or their business like the business owner. So tell us your name, your business and how we're going to help our listeners today.

Speaker 2: 0:35

All right. So if you're watching me, you know I'm not a small Asian dude. My last name is Twa. Actually, Many people mistake that. That's not me. I'm a six-foot-five blonde headed guy descended from Vikings, but I live out in. You know we were just joking this in the pre-show.

Speaker 2: 0:50

I lived in Oklahoma for a long time but moved to Missouri about 10 years ago, Live in the Ozark Mountains, just about an hour east of Branson. Absolutely love it. I'm about 50 acres in the country out here. Family is my purpose. My wife and I homeschool our four daughters. I have since they were born and since I fired the man in 2007,.

Speaker 2: 1:09

First daughter showed up in 2008. And it's been a whirlwind ever since then. I don't think we've just now starting to sleep full nights. Decade of not sleeping. Yes, Young children under that age all four and four and a half years. So it was been quite a ride of pivoting. But now we've been very busy for the last 12 years building e-commerce companies, building them, growing them, scaling them, acquiring them, exiting them, multi-brand, multi-channel, from Amazon to everywhere else, and just had a lot of fun doing that business. It is branding and physical private label products and we're all consumer driven to some degree. We all like products. We like our brands. If I say, you know, iPhones are great and Android suck, or if I say all iPhones are fanboys, we're going to piss off some people on this conversation just because they don't realize how brand driven they are. Yeah, absolutely. We play a role in that as the as of the business and the branding that we do online for the products we sell and the people we serve.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Fantastic. So is there anything specific you think our listeners should buckle up for? To learn today.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Yeah, I mean, if you had any interest in wondering if e-commerce could be for you, that's going to be part of this conversation. If you don't know what the heck to sell, we can talk a little bit about that. If you don't know what the numbers should look like, what metrics you should be focused on, we can talk about that, and I always love to talk about building the business with the end in mind. We call the platinum principle, and that's building it to exit and making a saleable asset so that you can repeat it and do it again.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Wow, that's. That's some heavy hitter stuff there, so let's introduce the show. We'll come right back and get started. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success, so that you can own a business that runs without you. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back. So, neil, where do we start? What got you into being an entrepreneur? You moved around from state to state, but where'd that entrepreneurship come from?

Speaker 2: 3:16

You know I boomeranged around while I live in Missouri. Ironically, I was born here. I say that ironically because I left when I was two and went to the West Coast and grew up in Oregon. My dad had found a job up there in Oregon, moved the family up there. We'd actually bounced off Arizona on our way up and followed the family, followed the job and we lived in the beautiful Rogue Valley in the southern portion of Oregon Great place to grow up as a kid, so much fun, Logging community and really an industrial community.

Speaker 2: 3:42

So my dad was a hardworking guy, worked in manufacturing and as a maintenance guy for about 29 years. He was a two-tour Vietnam vet on a destroyer in the Navy and he's just that consummate, hard-nosed, get it done, suck it up buttercups this is the way men act kind of guy, which was great because he was one of the last of the greater generations. I think that really understood how to buckle that into the minds and hearts of men. And so I learned how to be a good worker, how to be a hard worker, how to not complain and get out there. By the time I was 12, my side hustle was going and mowing lawns so I could make extra capital, because money in my house was a four-letter word. Dad worked hard, he provided. He did a lot of swing shift when I was younger so I'd see him on the weekends because he was gone. Most of the time my mom was around. You know, she didn't homeschool us but she was a homesteading mom, if you will, a stay-at-home mom, and so she was around to support us in the other ways. But you know, dad was really kind of the instrument that I looked towards. I have one sister and we're two years apart, so in life we kind of were separated a bit, but he really instilled that value. But my family, my extended family, my mom's sister, my uncle she married was more industrialist, more entrepreneurial. He was kind of my rich dad, if you will, and so as I got to learn from him and got older and learned about their business, he became a builder of boats in San Diego and actually built a company that built boats first trimarans and set records between San Diego and Hawaii. He just had this gift, he had this knowledge, he had this nature. He was an army ranger, med in Vietnam as well. Just a really strong character. But he interested in business and finance and money and he was not afraid to talk about them with me and he really shared some ideas and thought processes.

Speaker 2: 5:22

And as I was going through college, initially I didn't want to go there. I was actually going to go be a fighter pilot. It was fighter pilot or nothing. I didn't even go into filling out the applications for college or anything. So by the time I got to my second semester of my senior year, I had straight A's and everything because it was easy for me. But I just didn't want to do any more of that and I was planning to go be a fighter pilot and I showed up to the reserve station. They took one look at me and doing through the protocols and said you can't fit in a fighter jet, You're too big. Um, the F-16 is sorry, dude, you could fly the C-130s. You could be an aviation mechanic, he's like you know. They even said you could fly a helicopter, which to this day, I should have maybe gone to any of that.

Speaker 2: 6:01

So what I did my last semester of my senior year, high school was fill out all the applications for college, because I didn't know what else I was going to do. And they're like well, you can't stay here, Cause that was how my parents were there's like you can't stay here, Like you got to find something to do, you got to get a job, you got to work. I'm like I have no idea what to do out. I was pretty good at music and so I got that, which is cool. But send me to Iowa, um, in the middle of cornfield, playing marching band and playing jazz and you know, just figuring out what the heck to do for three years, uh, which was more like a party, and failing out twice from college and getting reinstated because I didn't want to be there.

Speaker 2: 6:37

And then the internet came online and saved me. Long story short, the internet I wanted to be a part of. From the moment I realized what was happening, From the moment we cleaned out the first basement room below the library to put the first computer lab in. I was hooked and I didn't know how to learn it. No one else knew how to learn it, so we just did it and executed it and learned on the fly, very imperfectly, and I even got a job down in the computer science lab just so I could be close to it and figure out what was going on.

Speaker 2: 7:01

I realized that academia was never going to catch up with me and the speed at which the internet was moving. So I started applying for jobs. It was like, well, I just got to get out of here. There's nothing to stay in academia. It's going to take forever to catch up at the rate they're going and corporations are spending more money and I've got a contract position at programming.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Even though I didn't really know how to program very well, I taught myself how to program at night, did the job during the day, so with that I started to figure out really quickly. It's who you know that gets you there and it's what you know that keeps you there. And if you got to stay up and figure it out, figure it out. So I did, and I actually got pretty good at it. Good enough to know that I didn't want to do it anymore, and so when I had the opportunity to apply to the first team that created the first mobile phone launch inside of Sprint, a new division called PCS, Personal Communication Services, I applied to get into that and became the head of a five-man group that was overseeing all of the knowledge resources, website information that was leading the knowledge base for the first mobile phone deployment in Sprint up in Kansas City, and that was about a five-year sprint from 5,000 employees to 80,000 employees. So I got to watch the mobile industry blow up from the inside out, which was pretty cool. Phones were launching so fast we couldn't keep up with it. Knowledge was going so quickly. We started implementing AI systems, knowledge management systems, learning language model systems and stuff to try to keep up with the amount of information, led the first implementation of a knowledge management inside of Sprint and with that success, IBM came in and said hey, we're going to help you fix some things. Great, Made good friends with the again who you know that gets you there. Made good friends with the partners at IBM and eventually there was a job opening and they said here, come check it out. Took me longer to get to Armonk than to do the interview and then I was inside IBM, Did that until 2007, when it was time to change paths and decide what to do, and knew that my uncle, who had really led me through the thought process and you know I was getting my learning was always, you know, saying you need to get a, buy a franchise, take a risk, start a business, do something like just don't stay in that world.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Um, when he died in 2007 in an ultralight aircraft crash in Jackson hole, Wyoming. That was a very pivotal changing point for me. I realized I'd lost that intellectual property in him and that knowledge and that time to converse and learn and the connections that he had made for me. And so about less than two years later, I was out. When IBM said we're moving your division, I said I'm out, I'll take early retirement, let's go. I'm not waiting any longer.

Speaker 2: 9:18

So with those catalysts, that was a pivot in my life to say I'm willing to take the risk, I've got to do it now. I can't hang on any longer. So in 2007, I normally launched my first management consulting firm. I got married in March, left IBM in June, found out we were pregnant in September. So how was that? For a year of pivot, my wife went on full bed rest by December. So we went from 250 to 300,000 a year in income to zero all in a matter of a year. New baby, new business, new bride. I don't always recommend that, but if you're going to go, go right.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And we call it burning the bridges burn the boats and not the bridges.

Speaker 2: 9:52

So I burned all the boats and said we're never going back. This is how we're going to do life now, because there's no other way to do it at this point. But I didn't burn the bridges. So within the next year the partners from IBM called back, said, hey, the projects we had you on and another project are all failing. Can you please come help save these projects? So they hired me back in.

Speaker 2: 10:08

But what I realized at that point was I was trading time for money as a W2 employee and then by the time I got into a nicer position of a management consultant, self-employed in my own company, I was just trading more time for money at a higher rate. And I shot the moon when they called me too dude, I was just like hey, what am I going to ask for? I said, how, about $250 an hour? They're like Don, when can you fly here? I'm like what, what Like? When can you get here? So now I'm contract billing in my own company backwards to IBM at $250 an hour, where they had me as a W-2 employee previously, but then through a year or two of that and building a couple more consultants in, I really wasn't taking the risk to move out of the self-employed, I was just trading time for money. And I got actually in the discovery process of hiring a mentor and having him train me all this stuff and finally wake me up and slap me across the face because my mentor had died and I had no more guidance. I was like, well, you know, number one sales fixes everything. And if I'm going to sell more business, I can't be doing the business and delivering the business and expecting to grow. So the pivot was hire more people, take more risk, find more leads, close more business. That's really what you're good at the implementation you could do, but it's really not your skill set. You're just doing it because you can, not that you should. And what a wake up moment that was, so in should. And what a wake-up moment that was so in that I started hiring more consultants and spent more time focused on business development, got pretty darn good at online marketing, so much so.

Speaker 2: 11:31

But I started testing out affiliate marketing because I was getting bored with my own legion and so I was like let me go play with a bunch of other people's products. So I did, found out I was actually really good at it when I started crossing the thousand dollar day in profit barrier, I was like, well, shoot, I don't need all these other guys anymore, I don't need all this other headache. Can we see if I can turn that into a business? And so I ran down the management consulting side and the staffing part of that system and just went straight into direct marketing and found out I was actually really good at it. But I also got good enough at it that I was watching these companies get really successful off of my work again and I'm like, okay, here we are again, back in that same position, like how did I get here? And so I'm like I need to own the offer, I need to own the outcome, I need to own the next part of this business, I need to conglomerate this thing together and start just stop piecing it apart.

Speaker 2: 12:16

So I was like I need to get the physical products or I need to get a product of some kind. Well, in my world, physical products made more sense. I saw my former mentor with physical products, boat, and I saw the way he did the business and delivered and transacted and I thought, okay, I can do that too. So I went out and started to look for physical products to promote, along with my direct response abilities. And I happened to cross the conversation with someone else who is much better at the finance and fundamentals and the data and spreadsheets and the SC personality type that I'm not. If you're ever familiar with the disc personality, I'm a DI uh big time. He's an SC big time. We are both opposite sides of the same coin. So you can imagine how those conversations go. Um, he talks to my wife really well and I at times say I'm going left and they both hear you went right.

Speaker 1: 13:04

And.

Speaker 2: 13:05

I'm like no, I said I went left and it's like how did you get that out of this conversation? And so we don't always speak the same language, but we are separate brains and we can combine into kind of one brain. My wife is that same way, and so is my business partner. So we decided after an hour of conversation we were going to make this thing work, because we had two sides of the same coin, and so we took off and with that, private label brands went very fast for us. We launched the first ones on the Amazon channel and made our first seven figure brand in 2014 date myself correctly Um, and from 2014 on we've just been launching more and more brands.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Um, we had a lot of people that were like, hey, how are you doing it? We were not doing as well, or we're not doing doing this at all, and we started to show a few people how to do it. Kind of sounds like a cliche story from the interwebs, but when you start to figure out how to do things and people around you are like, hey, show me how to do this. Borg gets around pretty fast. And we showed a lot more people how to do it and when they were able to replicate.

Speaker 2: 13:56

That helped us create systems and processes off of the replication of the training and consulting we offered them as systems and processes led us into creating bigger operations and control mechanisms and our own software and SaaS systems to support it, along with the processes and operations. And now we are 12 years into that model. At this point now it is into business, exiting and acquisitions. So I just spoke way too long as an answer to your question, but now we're onto the acquisition side. So we're in business and investment as well as operations and business controls now.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Very, very cool. So we got a lot to talk about then. One thing you mentioned at the very before the break was If you're considering e-commerce, so tell us a little bit about what you were thinking when you said that, what you would like to share.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Yeah. So while we work with existing brands and we've had brands from a million to 30 million or more come and say, hey, we don't know how to manage this channel or open this channel. We've done a terrible job with it Can you come in and help us consult on how we do this better? So, as a strategist, a consultant and an executor, we go in together and we look at what they're doing and we overturn the rocks, like Jim Collins said, and we look at the really nasty things they haven't been willing to look at and we criticize the bad things and lift up the good things and try to turn it around with them. If they're new and they want to get started, we have a fundamental like incubator, if you will, is what we call ourselves to bring them into our processes behind our NDA, into our software with our operations team, and train them and teach them how to become a CEO operator. So we start with zero, we start with a brand, we start with a new product, we start with a new foundation and we build that like a house to the top with the specific goal in three to five years, of making it a saleable asset so that my company can buy it from them. So we offer a first right of refusal with a specific three to five-year goal of going in and building a brand to exit and then we're going to look to acquire it or we'll help them broker it to our network who can buy it With that.

Speaker 2: 15:49

We have a private equity group called Patriot Growth Capital that is very well funded with investors from the veterans space operated, controlled, managed and invested by veterans and then the operations component of businesses we acquire is brought in with into that network and then we hire operators and train operators and grow them from the veteran base to operate and manage those businesses up until exit.

Speaker 2: 16:13

So we are doing more of a mission business as a mission, if you will, for that aspect of this, for the acquisitions side of the house.

Speaker 2: 16:21

So when I said that, it really has to do with anybody who might think they have a willingness and aptitude to learn e-commerce, want to become an active to passive investor, meaning they start actively as a CEO operator and later on they can learn how to make this what I call almost automated income in the book that I wrote so that you can spend less time in the operational controls of the business and spend more time as the CEO visionary of the brand, and then the operational controls and stuff can be managed by teams and within specific KPIs and OKRs.

Speaker 2: 16:54

So really it gets down to learning what is a good operator and a bad operator, why people have success and don't have success, why we are an invite-only group and incubator because I evaluate each person, each company, determine their risk assessment and match it up against my best operators and ensure that they have the aptitude, skill set and willingness to learn to actually take a business out to the speed in which we know it can go and be willing to grow it at the level of risk we know is required to get it to that seven, eight figure business, hopefully profit of seven and eight figures in three to five years.

Speaker 1: 17:30

On the disc. So our company is disc certified, we offer assessments and all those things. So what makes a good e-commerce CEO on the disc?

Speaker 2: 17:44

what makes a good e-commerce CEO on the disc, yeah, typically it crossovers a little bit through the IS and C, but mainly the SC. If you're a pure DI, then you're going to be someone who wants to be in the front. You're probably better at a CEO. You're better being out on the stage. You're better being out in a podcast. You're better being the evangelist. You're not great necessarily at the tactical and operational skill set level than an SC would. Moderately, you know dominant 50, 55 percent, but higher on the S&C. Okay on that.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Specific aspects of the daily, weekly, monthly operations and controls. You typically can train those people how to become more CEO in their mindset off the operations once they learn what they're doing every day. So we come in with a strategy, we incubate the strategy, we mentor them through that strategy so they don't have to be the strategist and really we do help them focus on what are the tactics that make it work and then get them into the rhythm of executing those tactics until they can start pulling themselves out of it, which is where we kind of elevate them past the operator into CEO. So they really have that structured focus. I saw someone else do it. I can do it too. I may have been a W2 project manager for 20 years and I'm done with that crap, but now I want to apply it to something that I do with myself.

Speaker 2: 18:55

I might be looking for other streams of revenue. We partnered with a company called Wealth Without Wall Street, which is about financial and investment and management and becoming your own bank and stop trading time for money, and e-com is a vertical within that. So if they're into real estate or investing or other passive income opportunities or active to passive investments, if they're looking at franchising, if they're wanting to buy a company, I always encourage people to be trained first. Before you buy a company. You might crash that thing into the ground. Like buying an airplane, you might want to hire a pilot first and get trained before you fly the plane. We do that with those operators and help them have an opportunity to build another revenue stream of the multi-revenue stream channel. They're going after Seven streams of revenue to an average millionaire. We can do all that inside an e-commerce company. Right, we can build seven, 12, 20 revenue streams inside one e-commerce company.

Speaker 1: 19:44

You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This episode is proudly brought to you by BOSS, where business ownership is simplified for success. At BOSS, we help business owners create their businesses to run smoothly without them being there 24-7. Our seasoned business coaches who have walked the path themselves provide invaluable guidance and support and with additional services like fast business loans, some approved within 24 to 48 hours, comprehensive online courses, detailed workbooks and engaging classes, boss offers a wealth of resources to help you succeed. Discover how small business success begins with Boss at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying the podcast, make sure to stay connected by hitting that subscribe button, giving us a thumbs up or leaving a positive review. Your support keeps us going. Now let's get back to our incredible guest Mention in a lot of your material Amazon. So is that where you do a lot of your products, your affiliate marketing?

Speaker 2: 20:50

Yeah, it's where we start the private label brands and we incubate them in that demand capture system, moving 8,600 units a minute, 200 million buyers, 5% of all retail goes there and 49% of all online sales. So we take them to the largest, fastest moving marketplace where products can be sold and we teach them how to become direct response marketers that happen to sell products as their transactional requirement and the products are delivered by a system that works. As a stupid thing, as a miracle, the thing works. Right Now. They've got automated robots and all kinds of craziness going on and it's quite amazing, really, as a logistics company. In fact, the company they bought was a logistics company. They sold books, if you remember, and then they bought a logistics company, rebranded it to FBA, which is actually the sixth largest logistics company in the world now, with planes, trains and automobiles Borroworrow that from Steve Martin and basically give that, you know, an engine that delivers last mile to the customer.

Speaker 2: 21:44

So I don't have to focus on that. So, if I'm focused on the direct response and the marketing, that's what we actually do. Amazon's a great place to teach people how to do that. Get their first products incubated, actually get them to sales, and by sales. We can run volumes of sales two, three, four years, up to eight figures before opening, say, a TikTok channel or a Shopify or their own website or another demand creation platform of product engineering and audience conversation that happens in the social sphere and then move that into the product.

Speaker 2: 22:09

But once we do it on Amazon, understand who it is, understand the audience you know, understand the mechanisms that can be deployed, that entire logistics infrastructure I can attach to a TikTok, an online, a wholesale, a Shopify, a website or any other platform and have Amazon's logistics deal with it all. So I can start in one platform and then omni-channel it all around that logistics company. So from there I don't have to handle the 40-foot containers. We're all going from manufacturing directly into the system. It frees me up to go into a multi-channel strategy where we don't have employees and warehouses.

Speaker 1: 22:42

Yeah, it's amazing Amazon story that I've watched. There's some people that don't like Bezos and some that do, but that's fine and all the platforms, for that matter, Might as well.

Speaker 2: 22:57

It's not like anybody else is leading any sort of you know ethical charge here on many of the other social platforms.

Speaker 1: 23:03

But just amazing how he's they're always improving that logistics side, which benefits the rest of us in what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 23:11

It really does. It really does and it created an automation or done for you system in which I could focus on what I was good at. So I'm not the logistics guy, that's where Reed handles. I'm not the operations guy. That's where my partner Reed is. I'm not the detailed financial guy. That's where my partner Reed lives and with that he's happy to handle and know the infrastructure and manage that. But in the end he really is just watching blinky lights and dashboards and product in motion because he's not touching any of them. They're all moving through logistics and warehouse sites of automation where we don't even touch the products.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Let's talk about brands, because I know you're into brands. Brands are important. What's some advice or tips that you can give to business owners that don't understand the power of a brand?

Speaker 2: 23:53

Well, yeah, that's a great way to say that. I think what gets confusing and I think what I originally got confused on with branding was well, I have a logo and a business card and I have this material and I got a brochure. Well, I must be branded. Nope, no, no, not at all. That's very naive.

Speaker 2: 24:08

The brand is made out of the narrative, the brand is made out of the understanding. The brand is made out of a know, like and trust relationship. I know what they're about, I like what they stand for and what they could possibly do for me and I trust that through that transaction, whatever it occurs whether it be the consulting or the product or the, you know, the purchasing and acquisition of a product through that transaction I'm going to be fulfilled emotionally and have a connectivity and a solution oriented outcome. Okay, that's what the brand signals to me. Right, if you, if I go back to Jim Collins and good to great and you look the way he analyzed brands and they went through that entire case study and while it was 10 years ago, it's extremely relevant still to the fundamentals of understanding branding is they looked at companies that made good brands that then became great brands and it really got into them, understanding what the customers wanted and simply offering them more of what they wanted. Instead of trying to put the perceived value of what they thought they wanted and what they think the market should do, they got better at reading the market and just giving it what it wanted.

Speaker 2: 25:06

A real brand simply gives the customers what they want and then gives them more of it, so they feel good about it and have an emotional connectivity and are willing to tell other people about it. It's the same way that you talk to somebody and say, well, hey. Or they come to you, for example, and they say, hey, you know, michael, what kind of car do you own? Like what kind of car do you own? Yeah, toyota.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Okay, why do you own a Toyota?

Speaker 2: 25:31

Mine's probably not a good reason.

Speaker 1: 25:32

My son's fixing to turn 16. So I'm driving it until he does Okay. So there's a purpose behind that, though you trust the product enough, but I do trust it that he will your son?

Speaker 2: 25:43

yes, exactly, okay, so there's a value to that. Why, why not afford, instead of that, right, right, um, why not a honda? Because there's something connected to that brand that signals value, price point, reliability, safety, the willingness to give it to my kid. I have a honda odyssey that is even 150 000 miles. I trust that thing with my life. I take it across the country right now, hands down, no problem, and I'm giving it to my kid. I have a Honda Odyssey that is even 150,000 miles. I trust that thing with my life. I take it across the country right now, hands down, no problem, and I'm giving it to my 16 year old daughter when she's ready to drive, and because I trust that vehicle. And I've had three other Hondas that went 30, you know, 300,000 miles. So there's a valley of emotional connectivity to that brand. I remember the first one I got when I drove it off to college.

Speaker 2: 26:15

We are brand driven by nature, even if we don't like to be that way. We want to be seen as individuals, but in many ways we're heard. Brand is getting into the mind of people and understanding what's hurting them, towards those emotions, what is answering and questions in their mind about the connectivity they have to that product. And if you can do that well, you can sell anything to anybody for 30, you know, in less than 30 seconds in a box. If you focus all that energy and effort. You spend four hours sharpening the ax, has been one hour cutting the tree. You can sell anything to anybody in a box when you find that emotional connectivity and answer those questions. That's what a brand actually is. It's building that emotional connectivity and resilience to the product, the value, the safety and the function of the outcome.

Speaker 1: 26:56

That's. That's good stuff. In your opinion, Is it just as important to build your brand within the walls of your organization, and in other words, get your team to buy into it?

Speaker 2: 27:09

It's not only needed, it's required, and I went about that through the employee side of the house once upon a time and I know that works well for easily named brands like Microsoft, and even watching what Elon did with Twitter and cutting them down from 7,500 to 2,500 employees and watching their output go 10x right what it was. It really gets down to what is a value for you. What's your purpose? What's driving? I discovered purpose over profit a long time ago. Due to family conditions, money issues and stuff. I had to focus on what was more purposeful. In the process of supporting those changes and pivoting through some of the stuff that was more challenging than just the money and finances and business I spoke about earlier. But life challenges and my wife dying in front of me in the hospital and then watching her get resuscitated and wondering if I was going to be a father of four children under the age of five by myself as they tried to save her life over 36 hours there's just pivots in those moments where you realize where is your purpose supposed to be focused and I put all intent and purpose on my family and I knew that eventually profits would come if I would just stay focused on those things and it really gets down to time and proclivity is going to be the outcome of that purpose. The money and the profit whether it's time profit, financial profit, personal profit, spiritual profit that comes out of it, not just financial profit. It's going to be gained in multiple fronts and so I think if people could really focus on that and understand that outcome, they're going to understand what it means to build a brand that encompasses that purpose. My brand now encompasses my lifestyle. It encompasses my ability to be here with my family, to homeschool my children, to see them be fulfilled and to see my 16-year you know and have spent a year working on that and now it's making money. It's like the number eight bestseller in teens and Western fiction and to see her, to see that accomplishment come through.

Speaker 2: 28:54

And now I'm working on my second daughter, who's looking at the media side and building up this media and pouring into each of my children where they are and where they are at, and meeting where they are and finding out what's most interesting in their life. And I can do that because I'm here, because I spend every day with them, right, and because I have the opportunity to build into them and pour into them and influence them, because I am here every day and that purpose for me will outweigh any profit I ever make in my life, because I know I can't attach a U-Haul to the back of a hearse. So if I'm just trying to build this wealth and whatever, I don't want my children one day to wake up and be like well, what was dad like? Well, you know, dad worked all the time. You know I don't want that to be the outcome of my story and so from that I've been willing to risk it all to get to that point. The brand itself and how I build other people into that. It's just a value of my own story.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Translated back into what started as my brand has become the brand I have now that others have picked up by pouring into their business and into their life and bringing them in with things that we've done and putting them in trust positions. I now have no employees. I actually have contract operators who are CEO operators of companies that now work through my business and help us build and grow and exit companies as a part of that journey. Now, so, because we help them become successful in their brands, they're helping others become successful in their brands and they're turning around and pouring back into those businesses behind us and we do profit sharing and splits with them to make that a worthwhile venture, which puts me up with no employees, which means my OKRs and KPIs are very different than employee driven, because they already know what the heck to do. I just get out of their way, I enable them through the business and they already know exactly how to become successful in the client business and how to direct and coach them or oversee operations, controls or even partnership splits with companies we do with our clients or acquisitions of companies that we bring into our enterprise, and for that reason we have contract hired mercenaries who are already running companies to do it. So I don't have to pour that as the brand now and the brand is now moving this year out of me and into Voltage and that has been a long time coming and it's a very difficult shift to make that.

Speaker 2: 30:59

And I would love to say that I had this really small, you know smart, intelligent, lined up plan that was going to do this thing and this thing and this thing to make it occur.

Speaker 2: 31:02

But in actuality, out of just the methodology of existing in a business and doing it daily, weekly, monthly, year by year, it is evolving that these individuals are coming forward and being more of a voice. My clients are becoming more of a voice. We had an event in Nashville where we went and participated as a part of that community with Wealth Without Wall Street, and I had eight Voltage people there representing, talking, showing up, and it was all about Voltage. We gave the largest event giveaway at the end and that was about Voltage too, and the whole brand is now pushing itself forward where it's not oh, neil Twa, he does Amazon and e-commerce and the FBA and all this other stuff and TikTok shops or whatever it's now, voltage does this and Neil's the CEO of the company and it's transitioning this year to move me out of that and push the brand forward more and more by itself.

Speaker 1: 31:49

You mentioned so many things in there I want to tackle, but the one thing that you said that really stands out because as a business coach I work with a lot of business owners and you said get out of the way. Most business owners won't get out of the way Any advice of how they can get out of the way Because they feel stuck in their business.

Speaker 2: 32:08

That control is really hard when you feel like you're giving it to people who don't care, and that's when I ditched the employees. I had 12 of them right and over the course of that period of having those employees and realizing there was no amount of incentive rah, rah, time that I could to ever get them fully buy into the business, when another person, another job, another opportunity would take them away from it. Instead, I thought, well, what if I just give them the opportunity, help them learn how to run and operate the opportunity themselves and turn them into an independent owner? They're 10 times more powerful. And so I spent the better part of six years doing that now focused on building other people up first and then, by proxy, I'm gaining the benefit of that.

Speaker 2: 32:47

So when I say get out of my way, I mean I'm literally letting these people stand up and be the leaders. I'm no longer the smartest guy in the room, I'm just one in a voice of very smart people, and as I bring people into this infrastructure and I have these conversations and I go out and look at these deals and stuff, I bring them back to the team and then I let them handle it. I trust them implicitly to do what they know that needs to be done because they've earned it through execution, their own execution, which benefited them too, because now they have businesses they operate and run and for that there's a trusted relationship there to our brand that's not going to be broken.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Something else that I'd like to address that most business owners face, and that's mindset. And so, coming from the lack of finances, growing up always having to work hard your father a lot of people can't fathom making a different amount of money than what they were grown up with. So how did you transition into you know? Uh? Oh well, we're middle-class to.

Speaker 2: 33:49

You're going to love the answer to that one, right? Uh, when I set out on my own and all these magical fairies popped out of my butt and all this money came, I never had any trouble and it was all just really easy for me. Isn't that what everybody believes? Like, when they hear this story, they're like oh yeah, he can say that, belize. Like when they hear this story, they're like oh yeah, he can say that it's so easy because he doesn't have any money problems.

Speaker 2: 34:05

Let me tell you about money problems. When that business went bankrupt and I had three babies and a pregnant wife and they repoed my car out of the house at 10 o'clock at night and I had $269 in my bank account. Let me tell you what scarcity looks like. Okay, been there. Felt it against the wall, felt the palpable nature of it, felt the depression and anxiety, felt the betrayal of people's understanding of who I was and where I was going in business. When all of that came collapsing down Right, and once you felt that you actually understand what it means to put purpose above profit. Right, to really put. What is it that values now more than anything? Well, I need $1,980 and 53 cents next month to keep the lights on, feed my family and to ensure that you know nothing else bad happens for that short period of time and you know for that it was a turning moment in my faith walk that I would actually allow that to happen, because I can't. I know that exact amount to the penny showed up in the next 30 days from this storyline, but I can't exactly tell you how it showed up. It was just there and the light stayed on and the kids stayed fed and we kept going forward. I can't remember exactly how I give glory to God, but I don't remember exactly how it all came down.

Speaker 2: 35:11

So, when it comes to mindset, if you've never been broken, if you've never been at the bottom and you've never looked up to see where you could go, then you've never truly risked at all. You've never truly felt the fear and did it anyways. You may think you have. You may think you'd be staring down. Well, neil, I don't know how I'm going to make my things happen. I don't. You know I got this job and my family's, whatever, whatever. But I just don't know if I have the chance to risk it. You're never going to find out if you don't try. You're always going to stop, try to think your way around it, and actually what you think you're doing is being smart about it and really thinking I know how clever can I be when in actuality, that's a limiting, scarcity mindset and you're actually locked into it. You're limiting your opportunities, you're creating scarcity when you think you're in abundance and in actuality, you're dug yourself into a hole. So far you don't feel like there's any way to risk your way out of it, and you may have family depend on you. You may have a wife that doesn't want you or a husband that's like nope, can't do that, and you may have got yourself into a situation that makes it extremely difficult. You're going to have to earn your way out of it, which means you're going to have to start working on something every day to pull yourself forward. If you don't, the mindset will never come.

Speaker 2: 36:17

It doesn't just wake up, can always be there. Bankruptcy is certainly one of them. Facing down death for yourself or a loved one that you care about that can certainly change your mindset quickly, if you allow it. Dealing with children and sickness that can certainly fix your brain, you know. Just getting into that position where you're willing to risk things and realize that money is monopoly, okay, you can make more of it. It's always there. It's always ever flowing. Just because it's not near you right now doesn't mean there's a trillion dollars not sitting around the corner. You just can't access it. It's always there. You are simply limiting your ability and belief that you can get it. If you can get past that single point, okay, and not go bankrupt in the process of doing it, don't highly recommend that, but you know it's a good learning curve. If you want to go for it, then there is your opportunity cost to actually do it.

Speaker 2: 37:09

How does it start? One foot in front of the other. Every three feet you go forward. You can look back three feet and see how far you've come. And you are going to every three feet every three feet. Pretty soon you're at the top of the mountain. You look back and you see how far you've come. Most of you want to sprint 12 feet forward. You fall over, you're dead and you can't breathe. Literally, it's like getting up and trying to run a marathon off the couch because you just thought it was possible and most of you aren't even going to try to run the marathon. So why even try? Because I can't go 26 miles. Well, here's the thing right, I walk 28 miles every week. I run three to five miles every week as a part of that.

Speaker 2: 37:44

I started doing that a long time ago so that I could push out easily four miles or more a day. And that didn't just come because I decided I wanted to get up and go do it. I just had to put in the work every day 10,000 steps to 15,000 steps, 10,000 steps, 15,000 steps. Even if I didn't want to, even if it was raining, even if it was hard, I got up every day and I walked. Even if I didn't want to, even if it was raining, even if it was hard, I got up every day and I walked. You can do the same thing, but you have to start the process. You can't think your way out of it. I will take an average IQ person any day and watch them execute imperfectly and learn how to become smart at it, than a super IQ who tells me everything they're going to do about it and never does anything.

Speaker 1: 38:22

Yeah, that's good advice. I could keep going, but we're just about out of time. I want to allow you the time to share how people can get in touch with you, your company, what that looks like if they want to work with you talk with you business, build it, scale it and potentially exit it.

Speaker 2: 38:43

Then check out the book on Amazon Almost Automated Income with FBA, which will give you the strategy, or head over to voltageDMcom. You can also get a $5 copy of the book, or maybe I think we're going to give you some free copies as part of this episode, if I'm not mistaken. So I'll give you 10 free copies here for those of you who will connect with Michael To claim your free copy of Neil's book text.

Speaker 1: 39:04

1-417-695-5479 with the keyword MorrisonFBA, that's M-O-R-R-I-S-O-N-F-B-A. The number to text will be in the show note description.

Speaker 2: 39:23

We'll give you those 10 free copies of the book, which will give you the strategy on how to get started from there. Watch some of the presentations. Check out the high voltage business builders podcast that I do. A type 5% globally ranked now, thank God, that's quite a feed after doing it for so many years.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Um and check out some of those episodes, some of the case studies and things, and if it's of interest to you to find out whether or not you qualify for our by invitation only business builders group. It's a 12 month engagement. It might work, it may not work, but don't show up expecting it to be a $5 deal. Um, it's not going to cost as much as a house, but it's certainly going to cost enough to make the business work. So make sure you show up with some capital, uh, and be ready to learn and earn in the process. If any of that sounds interesting, if it's another revenue stream that might make sense to you, if you're willing to get out of that job, if you want to look at another way to do business and e-commerce has been on your mind and you're just want to find out what's going on and see what it's about, check me out.

Speaker 1: 40:12

Well, I appreciate all the nuggets you've shared today. You've helped a lot of people, I guarantee it. If you were in a room with a bunch of business owners of different levels, different seasons in business, what is one piece of advice you could offer that would be applicable to all of them? Choose your heart.

Speaker 2: 40:30

Choose your heart. It's hard to be poor.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Speaker 2: 40:35

It's hard to be working poor. It's hard to be in the middle income tax bracket and pay the most amount of taxes of anybody. It's hard to be a business person who's operating independently by themselves with no support. It's hard to be poor. Choose your heart.

Speaker 1: 40:50

That's good. I saw a statement I'm probably going to botch it up, but something about it's harder to be poor than it is to be wealthy. Yeah, because you're always trying to where's my next penny coming? Where's my next dollar? I got to run to the store, pay my electric bill and then tomorrow it's certainly stressful.

Speaker 2: 41:06

It can be stressful too On the other side, when you have more money and more people who want money from you, and you're always trying to figure out who to trust. That's true.

Speaker 1: 41:13

That's true. Well, I appreciate you again and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Michael, Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to small business pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck, you need help creating a business that can run without you, or you need a fast business loan or line of credit, go to our website businessownershipsimplifiedcom and schedule a free consultation to learn why small business success starts with boss. If you want to talk anything small business related, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.