August 28, 2025 • 47 mins
What if your truck cab could double as a mobile business HQ—earning income even while you sleep? In this eye-opening episode, Trucking Ray sits down with Neil Twa, founder of Voltage Digital Marketing and expert in Amazon FBA, to reveal how truckers can tap into one of the most powerful e-commerce systems in the world. Neil shares how his own journey—through bankruptcy, brand-building, and scaling to help over 45,000 entrepreneurs—uniquely positions truck drivers to thrive in online retail. From mindset to marketing, he breaks down the exact steps to building an "almost automated income" stream using Amazon’s fulfillment network, all while still staying behind the wheel. If you've ever dreamed of stacking passive income on top of your trucking career, this episode shows you how to make that vision real.
Key Takeaways:
✅ Turn your cab into a command center — Run a profitable Amazon FBA business from your truck using Wi-Fi and logistics knowledge.
✅ "Almost automated income" — Amazon fulfills 7,000 units per minute, creating passive revenue while you drive, sleep, or rest.
✅ Truckers have the edge — With firsthand logistics experience and time between loads, drivers are positioned to scale online businesses.
✅ Neil’s “Five F’s” of success — Faith, family/friends, finances, and freedom are the pillars of building something meaningful.
✅ Brand over product — Focus on building a brand that can grow and last, not just quick-hit product listings.
✅ Product selection made simple — Start with items priced over $50 and aim for at least $12 net profit per unit.
✅ Tools for modern trucker-preneurs — With technology like Starlink, running an online business from anywhere is easier than ever.
✅ Now is the moment — Economic uncertainty is opening the door for what Neil calls a "generational wealth moment"—if you're ready to act.
✅I’ve got something special to share with you all. My friend Neil is giving away FREE copies of his book, and you can grab yours right now by heading to voltagedm.com/freebook and entering the code TRUCKINGRAY at checkout. The system will handle the rest — easy as that.
This episode is your roadmap for delivering more than just freight—start building a business that rides with you, mile after mile.
Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Click here to join the conversation!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome back to that's Delivered, where stories
on the road meet innovation,mindset and real opportunity.
If you've been with us for awhile, you know that I love
talking about ways to grow,whether it's behind the wheel or
just behind a business, and Iguess today helps folks do just
that.
Turn a side hustle into systemsand systems into income that
delivers even when you're offthe clock.
Meet Neil Twa, the founder ofVoltage Digital Marketing,
(00:33):
author of one of the world'sleading experts in Amazon
fulfillment by Amazon FBA.
Over the past decade, neil hashelped over 45,000 people start
and grow to scale a successfule-commerce brand, and his new
book, almost Automated Incomewith FBA, lays out how to build
a successful lifestyle-drivenbusiness using the systems in
(00:56):
place and strategies he teachesevery day.
Here is where we get interestingfor all drivers out there.
If you're a trucker and you'realready moving freight, but you
want to also own your ownproduct, how do you do that?
What if you could do that bydelivering the loads and
building the brand at the sametime?
That's where we're going todive into this today and learn
(01:18):
how we could do that.
Turn your knowledge, logistics,downtime on the road and
entrepreneur mindset into abusiness that earns while you
roll.
So let's get into it.
Neil, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Doing great today, brother.
Thanks for bringing me on.
Yeah, it's great here.
It's always great to haveanother podcaster on the show
(01:39):
and talk about the great thingsyou're doing over there.
Man at Voltage.
Man, you're doing great things.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm having some fun, you know I've been.
Uh, like I said earlier, I'mtoo stressed to be blessed or
two, oh wait, no that's tooblessed to be stressed.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's it right there Be stressed.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, you know it's uh.
Yeah, there's a lot of goodthings that wrap into that.
My mind wraps around a whole,many, a lot of good things.
I get to hang out with myfamily, I get to have fun, I get
to be blessed to meet wonderfulpeople like you, and, yeah,
that's just a good thing and Ienjoy it.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Nice, yeah, I like it too.
It gets the people going, itgets me going.
It gets me thinking about waysthat, hey, if they want to slow
you down, yeah, add some stressto people, that'll really slow
them down.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So first of all, I want to see how you got started
from the beginning.
How did you get this going toin terms of technology and
business and watching theinternet come online, I was
always fascinated by what itcould do, and while a lot of my
friends went into the technologyside, the systems and support
of it, I was always about how doI make money with it, make
business, how do we createsolutions that power things?
And so it was so new you had tokind of jump in early, so I
(03:02):
just jumped in and figured outhow to do it, taught myself
programming, and that just gaveme sort of a passion for the
technology and the business andeventually led me into doing
more like leading and digitalmarketing kind of stuff.
Affiliate marketingparticularly.
I was on doing mobile ads and Iended up with a dating app that
turned out to do really well inthe mobile space.
But I just realized, as thatstarted to change, I didn't
(03:23):
control the offer, I didn'tcontrol the actual outcome.
Affiliate marketing is a greatway to start a little side
hustle, promoting other people'sproducts and getting a
commission, but when you don'tcontrol the end narrative, you
don't control the rest of theproduct, you don't control the
ultimate outcome.
And as I got into 2011 and 12,that was one of the big things
on my mind, and someone I knewhad said, hey, I'm flipping some
(03:44):
products.
I saw it on Facebook market,facebook's page.
And he's like, hey, I'mflipping some products on Amazon
.
And I'm like, hey, I hit him up, what are you doing here?
How are you doing that?
And it was like eBay.
I don't want anything to dowith it.
I don't want to house him on myhouse.
I can't be.
No, no, no, no.
They have this thing calledfulfilled by Amazon and you send
your products into them andthen they ship it to the
(04:04):
customer.
And, as of 2009, they hadbought a logistics freight
management company that doesplane, trains and automobiles
and they were shipping productslike crazy.
And so Amazon bought them andrebranded them and turned them
into what we know them today asthose Amazon trucks that show up
at your house all the time.
And so I just thought the youknow thinking forwards.
You know solution orientedpeople in business who want to
(04:27):
overcome problems, want toadvance themselves in their life
or their business or theirfamily or their wealth or
whatever.
They always think forward.
They think solutions.
They're not big on thinking inthe past.
You know what do I do wrong,what happened in the past, and
they don't sort of use that as abadge of honor.
They're people who aretenacious and go-getters and
they think about what they cando to solve problems and create
opportunities.
And that just happened to besomething that, through time and
(04:47):
troubles and major failures andopportunities, I kind of
learned to become that personand kind of conditioned my mind
into it.
And so when I saw Amazon, I'mlike this is future opportunity.
I see where the road is, I'mpacking here, I see where this
thing could go and I just jumpedinto it full force and started
launching products.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nice, that's really good.
I like the energy when you,when you aim upwards, right
that's as versus aimingdownwards you you see good
things, you see better outcomes,so great.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, you aim to fail forward, because nothing is a
perfect process.
You're going to fail at steps,you're going to fail at
processes.
As I tell my four daughters, asI tell them you know you're
trying and doing things.
You know you have to realizethat your success is going to
come through the failures.
So just keep going, just keeptrying.
Fail forward, fail forward,fail up, don't fail out, just
keep trying.
And I'm trying to instill thatin them every day.
Wow, Four daughters man, yeah,we get to homeschool to do, um,
(05:41):
we've, we've built a life aroundaround what we call lifestyle
by design.
My wife stays home.
She used to be an RN and BSNand after the first child we
kind of retired her because sherealized there's no way I'm
handing this baby out the system, I'm not leaving this child.
And I was like, well, that'sfine, I'm, you know this cute,
fuzzy, furry, little lovelything.
I can't let go of it either.
So we'll figure it out.
So we just made a choice whenwe were first married to do that
(06:04):
.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Beautiful.
Yeah, that's a good decision.
And then can you break downwhat it means to almost automate
income.
Why is that idea such a gamechanger?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, they created all
these systems.
There's technology, there'sinfrastructure.
The platform we're riding onwas an innovation of an
entrepreneur who built abusiness around this platform,
and so, you know, amazon had anentrepreneurial feel to it,
still does in many cases, eventhough they've got some
corporatocracy.
And I'm not a total fan boybecause I ride on their channel
as what we call an incubatorputting products on the market
(06:35):
and determining can we capturethe demand that exists for those
products and then moving theminto multiple sales channels and
evolving a way we call aholistic e-commerce company
right, not just a single saleschannel.
And so, as I was learning howto do that, one of the biggest
components we discovered was theprocess by which we determine a
product has upside potential,can sell and sell well and has a
(06:57):
decently long life cycle to it,right.
And part of that process of notflipping the products was
realizing we needed to createbrands If we married the brands
and not our product.
And every product we sent tomarket was an opportunity to
find out if the market wanted itfrom us.
Not smart enough to tell themarket what it wants, but smart
enough to understand what themarket needs and wants and try
(07:18):
to prepare something for themarket and they'll buy it from
us instead of somebody else.
And with that kind of thoughtprocess, while I started it with
the concept of a little sidehustle, I really realized the
opportunity was to think aboutit like a real business, treat
it like a real business, act andfunction in the time, energy,
attention and money what we calla team effort of making that go
(07:40):
out and letting all of thoseaspects of that team effort work
in favor of the business.
So what that created was theopportunity to leverage systems
literally that were beingcreated, developed and billions
of dollars are flowing intothese systems across all of
these platforms, online right,and leverage that to get my
product to the customer, lastmile to the customer, and not
(08:01):
have to have my own warehousesand freight and shipping and
trucks and people and all theother stuff that goes along with
that, so that I could free mytime up to be a part of my
family, to do life, to createthe opportunities that I wanted
with my home and also to havethe financial component of that
be a reward for those efforts.
And learning how to put thatpurpose and value first meant
(08:21):
that, while profits areobviously a very important part
of the business and we shouldtalk about that what it
ultimately, in the path of 18years, literally getting to the
point where I am now realizingthat there's what I call the
five F's and one of them isn'tthe F you think it is the first
is faith.
Faith in yourself that you'llkeep going.
Faith that you'll find theright people.
(08:42):
Faith in God.
Faith in things that make senseto you.
I have a faith in Jesus Christand that faith is what allows me
to go out and realize that Idon't trust the world for my
confidence.
I don't trust the world for mygain.
I trust a faith in the heavenlyfather.
From that I understand where myfamily and friends fit in all of
that.
Sometimes friends become morelike family.
Sometimes your family doesn'tunderstand.
(09:03):
Sometimes they're the mostcritical.
Sometimes they're the hardestto overcome.
Sometimes generational cursesand problems with them are
imparted on you, which makes itdifficult for you to see the
opportunity and to see your pathforward.
Sometimes friends don't do that.
They don't have that historicalthing.
They'll lift you up, they'llpick you up, they may let you
stay on your couch to help youget it done.
Sometimes family doesn't dothat, sometimes they do right,
(09:24):
that leads to the opportunityfor finances.
Right, as you put that purposeand value forward.
If you're not just thinkingabout yourself, the finances or
the profit of finance will come.
And all of these have profit inthem.
Right, all of them areprofitable.
Everybody hears word profit andgoes straight to finances.
But if you don't have a profitin relationship or faith or
other things, you're not goingto profit in the world, right?
(09:45):
And the final component of thatis freedom.
It's the baseline that stacksup the whole pyramid, it's the
foundation of all of thesethings.
Without freedom, there's nochoice.
Without the understanding ofthe freedoms you have, you will
not get to gain the rest ofthose things and you will fight
for them.
When you can see that they'llhave done correctly, they'll be
given to you freely wow, that'spower pack man.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That that's a book in itself.
Right there, I mean a book initself.
Yeah, I can recommend one ifyou want to go read it.
Yeah, uh, I was thinking thatyou know, faith, people have a
hard time with that because it'ssomething they can't really put
your hands on.
Yeah, it's hard to see it.
Uh, you really got to trainyour mind to be able to absorb
it.
You do and accept it you do.
(10:29):
I mean that's huge.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, it is a whole lot about being an entrepreneur
and a business person, as we putfaith in our willingness to
solve solutions or to findpeople that will help us solve
those solutions, or to createopportunities for other people
to be involved in that process.
Create opportunities for otherpeople to be involved in that
process and to do it without theidea that it's the world as the
only place where thatopportunity can be valued.
It can be valued by the peoplewho are employed in, or the
(10:53):
people who get the money fromthe logistics, or the people who
get money from other componentsof the business, who have lives
and things that revolve aroundit.
It's serving more in a servantleadership than just yourself.
And that's really hard tounderstand why, because you know
, when I was an employee uh upto uh, 2007, when I worked for
IBM, um, my faith was that theywere going to keep honoring
their agreement.
(11:14):
What happens if they don't rightRight?
What happens if your numbergets called right?
Then, all of a sudden, yourfaith in the concept that you
did the right work and showedthe time and put the effort in
is not rewarded by theirwillingness to continue to honor
that agreement.
That's a business.
It's a role we play and whenyou have to step out of that
role it's like the proverbialstepping out on the water.
It's getting out of the boatand realizing that if you don't
(11:35):
put your trust and faith in theworld, there's something greater
to put your trust and faith in.
So then you have more freedomto go out and to fight the good
fight in the world, becauseyou're no longer using the world
as your crutch or your excuse,and literally that means your
opportunity begins at the end ofyour excuses.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
That's neat.
I like that.
It's almost like Peter walkingon water.
He fell in the water too.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Right, so we all fall .
The point is that we keepswimming.
Yeah, he did, and he tried, hetried and we tried and I just
don't.
So many people are in the boat,right, yelling at the water to
come to them.
Yeah, right, they don't want toget out of the boat, they're
just yelling for the water tocome to them, and if the water
doesn't come to them, it's all ascam, everything's scam.
Nothing works, it's all fake.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Everyone wants to take advantage of been
victimized, but I have neverbeen the victim of something I
couldn't, uh, mentally controlmyself.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And then, what can I control as I tell my children?
What can you control?
100 of your emotions and 100 ofyour actions you can control
accountability.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I like that good, good father there.
So, man, you, you've taught,you're doing great as a father.
Like I said, you're admittingto challenges of life.
The lessons for about 45,000students.
You've been a coach for them.
What's the most common mistakesor mindset that blocks people
from keeping them fromsucceeding?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, to be fair, I've had thousands of students
have about 45,000 followers onTikTok.
No-transcript is to buildpeople up.
(13:31):
I used to make employees ofpeople and then realize that's
not really empowering and it'snot a true relationship, any
more than it was for me when Iwas an employee.
So what I decided to do insteadwas change and invert the
process and help people becomeowners of their own success.
Empower them through tools,technology and people and
(13:51):
processes to enable them,through my systems, to be
successful as they walk theprofit process of building their
own physical product business.
And then, when they becomesuccessful, there's
opportunities to partner withthem, to be an operator,
controls with them, to help themwith our business as we help
them with theirs, and to givemore upside and greater
potential over a longer periodof time with less people.
(14:12):
So I have no courses or programsor and there's nothing here for
anybody listening to this tobuy from me.
Today there is the realizationthat if an owner and an operator
become successful and I'vehelped them do that then we have
more of a level playing fieldin our relationship and then
that opens the doors to allthese wonderful opportunities we
can do together over a longerperiod of time.
So, as we mentor people andhelp them with our software and
(14:34):
technology, I own nine brands.
We run nine different productbrand lines that we control
within our business.
So we are operators first andforemost, and with that, then we
know how to build and growthese brands seven, eight
figures and as I give people theopportunity to mentor and coach
with us, they become CEOoperators of their own brands.
And there's a lot more that wecan do together.
(14:55):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That's nice, um, and success doesn't come alone
Teamwork.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate ofthat.
When we work togethercohesively, we can accomplish so
much more.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Absolutely.
It's a win-win in that way.
Yeah, and I have what's calledthe first right to refusal for
everybody who works with me thatwhen their business is four and
five years out and borrowing aterm from real estate, we have a
gentleman's agreement that iftheir company is ready for an
exit and meets the buy boxcriteria then my company will
look to acquire them.
And I'm part of a company calledPatriot Growth Capital and that
is a veteran backed, veteranfunded, veteran organized,
(15:31):
veteran operated business thathelped 16,000 veterans last year
.
You can check them out atPatriot Growth Capital dot com.
If you're a veteran, you should.
They're empowering families andveterans forward and as part of
our initiative to buy companiesand bring them under the
control of our brand, then weare employing veterans into that
, certain veterans who have anopportunity and proficiency to
become a CEO operator after10,000 hours of proficiency in
(15:55):
about four to five years theyhave an opportunity to buy the
company away from us, givingthem a generational lift up, and
we have a line item in ourbusiness to give them the
capital down payment necessaryto acquire that after five years
.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Beautiful, beautiful, great work there.
So you're not just sellingstuff online, you're actually
building a brand.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Building businesses.
What's that?
Yep Building businesses thatare brand driven.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, Perfect.
You know there's one strategythat listing tweaks or that
makes a business impact early on.
What would you say is the beststrategy to go about that when
they?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
kind of get.
Yeah Well, you know, honestly,the most successful companies
that we run or have ran andbased on the ones that we
watched weren't successfulusually come down to the
aptitude of the operator.
If they see things kind offuture oriented and solution
driven like, this is a problemI'm going to solve.
This is a normal aspect ofbusiness.
(16:54):
Problem solving is looking foropportunities to create value,
to create a difference in theproduct or the brand.
If they intrinsically kind oflook more positively on the
aspects of output, then they aretypically more successful in
building their business.
If there's someone whotypically laments about current
situations or past situationsand you hear them lament and
talk about those more, they'retypically more in the past.
(17:15):
Therefore they're not futuresuccess oriented.
It's in the language and lingoof their person.
If they hang on to troubles andthey use them as a battering
ram for the problems they have,that's what we call
commiserating.
If, again, they're looking atsolutions and focus.
If they have no experience ine-com and have no product, we
can teach them how to becomesuccessful in that process
because by nature they areinclined to be problem solvers,
(17:43):
to not see every problem as somebrick on an imaginary wall that
they keep building up in theirmind.
But they see every opportunityto go around that, to solve it,
to be tenacious and to figuretheir way through.
They just need the path and theopportunity and the right
people to help them forward andthen they turn into amazing
operators, right.
They turn into people whoreally understand the
opportunity that's been given.
So really it gets down tomindset.
Whenever I interview somebodywho's furious about talking to
me in terms of a mentoring role,I run them through what's
(18:06):
called a DISC profile.
You ever heard of that?
A D-I-S Well, real quick, youcan Google the details, but it's
a simple.
It's a simple process by whichthey answer a series of
questions.
It takes about 20 minutes.
The output is not like an INFG,feel good.
You know what's my favoritecolor kind of stuff.
I like long ones for the beach.
No, this is like what's youraptitude toward business?
(18:28):
How do you see problem solving,how do you answer the questions
?
And it categorizes it into fourthings D dominant, I influencer
, s supporting and Ccompassionate.
And in that way you see theoutput of their person aligning
with a particular role inbusiness and the output of that
is to help them understand sortof a strengths, weaknesses,
(18:49):
opportunities, threat analysis,things that might threaten their
opportunity to be successful,the things that are
opportunities that they can dowell or even do better.
Where are their weaknesses?
So it can be identified.
If part of their weakness istheir consistency, then
operating a business may not bethe best way for them if they
don't have an operator who cansupport them.
(19:09):
Okay, it means that you need tounderstand where your strengths
are and then you need to fillin the gap on your weaknesses.
If you're great at selling andleading the ideas and pushing
the business forward, thenyou're usually going to be very
terrible at operating.
The consistency, thefollow-through, is going to be
difficult for you If you'resomebody who follows through,
shows up, does the work, puts inthe effort, but find it
(19:31):
difficult to be the sales guy,the business guy, the one who
goes out and drums up thebusiness.
You're going to suffer inbusiness and I see that in a lot
of smaller and mid-sizedbusinesses.
When they get going is becausethey try to wear all those hats.
They don't really understandwhat they're good at and what
they should be doing, and sothey kind of fill all the roles
with half the effort.
So my strength in business, mystrength in being the CEO and my
(19:54):
position, the businessdevelopment, the relationship,
the seeing the path forward sowe don't run into icebergs.
You know staying at the top andkind of making sure that I see
the waves, I see the boats, Isee everything rolling.
I'm trying to avoid theicebergs, I'm trying to move the
whole ship forward.
It's all our brands, all ourpeople, all this engine.
My partner is the guy down inthe wheelhouse.
His name is Reed and in 12years of knowing the guy, he is
(20:16):
the operations guy, he is thetactical guy.
He pays attention to thedetails, he has a CFO mindset.
He understands where the wateris, he knows where we're going.
It's his job to ensure theengines keep running.
Everything is operating asexpected, we're meeting our
numbers, we're stayingprofitable, we're pushing the
engine of the business forward.
(20:37):
That's two people in one brain,right, and I see a lot of
people try to do all of thatfrom the very beginning and I
know how that looks.
Ask me how I know, dude.
First, three to four years in mybusiness after leaving the
corporate world, yeah, I triedto do everything myself and I
was failing at it miserably.
If I sold the business, then Ihad trouble delivering the
business.
But then when I focused ondelivering the business, there
(20:57):
was nobody to sell the businessRight.
And so we ended up with thismantra over time, realizing that
sales fixes everything.
And when you start to sell thebusiness and learn how to become
the lead practitioner, ifyou're the CEO or the top end of
that business, it is your jobto sell that business.
That is it.
You need to figure out who candeliver it.
(21:17):
You understand what I'm saying?
You solve that problem and therest of the other problems go
away Right.
Then, if you do it really well,you have a new set of problems,
which is when the money comesand things go really well.
You got a new set of problemslike figuring out who to trust
with your money, how to investyour money, how to be smart and
keep more of it, how to empowerother people to keep going.
(21:38):
You got new problems to solve,but you should still be solving
them on the top end of drivingthe business, and I see way too
many business owners too focusedon just the operations, which
is important because you shouldprovide a quality product or
service, but they don't focusenough on selling the business.
They don't know who to sell toand how to make sure they
communicate with them reallywell and they lose focus on
those offers and opportunitiesto drive that business forward
(22:00):
and the whole thing suffersbecause they can't ride.
As we say in the country, youcan't ride two horses with one
ass.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So pick one, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I know a nice saying that was told to me.
Yeah, yeah, I know a nicesaying that was told to me.
Nothing happens until there's asale or sign on the line for a
contract.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
When the money hits the bank.
That's all that matters, anddon't celebrate until it does
right.
Until then the deal is not done.
You got to get them.
Truck drivers Got to get thatdeal done.
Can't pick that load, I've gotto have that money.
It's the way it works.
But here's the thing aboutbusiness.
I think a lot of it.
Just the last part of thatcomment with your question.
When you don't know what youdon't know, you're going to fall
victim to the market.
(22:34):
And I fell victim to the marketwhen I wasn't willing to listen
to what people wanted from meor make sure I understood what I
was going to give to them,because I was literally in two
minds I was in the mind oftrying to sell and the mind of
trying to deliver.
When I started to focus on themind, it says okay, I want to
drive this business forward.
They say that the you knowmentor appears when the student
(22:58):
is ready.
Well, this guy appeared.
His name is Mark.
He worked in the town near us.
He gave me a shot at acontracting job.
I realized, as a small businessowner, that he was doing those
things right, and so I was likeyes, I'll take this thing.
I want to be next to you so Ican glean information and learn
at what're doing right.
And he taught me the mantra ofsales fixes everything.
And he's a consummate salesprofessional and he had aligned
a development and delivery teambehind him for the products that
(23:19):
he was serving and I saw heorganized that.
I saw how he actually made thatbusiness work and he was very
good at it.
And so he taught me the art ofthe sell you know from informed
consent and from the opportunityto position the right person
and the right offer at the righttime and to not force sales or
end up being scammy used carsalesmen, with people being an
offer of integrity anddelivering with integrity.
(23:41):
And that was the greatestlesson I ever learned.
And in the five years after Ilearned that I had 10 management
professionals now in my companywho were doing the business.
It was my job to sell and theywere delivering.
And as soon as I unlocked thatcomprehension, I was moving
through.
You ever hear of the Kiyosakiquadrants?
You ever heard of that?
Maybe somebody listening tothis call has heard it.
Rob Kiyosaki and the rich dad,poor dad guy.
(24:03):
Yeah, okay, he also had thequadrants.
You know the four quadrantsright Of employed, self-employed
, entrepreneur, a business owner, an investor.
If we're progressing intobusiness and we're considering
business, not a side hustle or ahobby business.
Even if we started on the side,even if we do something to move
ourselves forward while we'remaybe on a truck roll or doing
(24:24):
anything else, the goal is notto think about it like a side
hustle.
The goal is not to limit yourbelief or scarcity that it's a
few thousand extra dollars amonth I'm shooting for just so I
can make ends meet.
It is the real understandingand if I put the right time,
energy, attention and money intothis, it will no longer be a
side hustle.
It could be a life-changingopportunity.
And if I truly believe that andget out of the boat, that
(24:46):
should be my predominant focus.
It should be to turn somethingI'm doing on the side into that
full-time thing, with theexpectation that I'm going to
leave behind and keep movingforward.
If I'm only treating it like aside hustle or hobby business,
I'm staying right where I am,I'm saying I don't want to move
forward and therefore I'mlimiting my upside potential, my
opportunity, and I'm actuallyoperating in a scarcity mindset.
(25:07):
People will think, well, a fewthousand extra months is
abundance to me.
Well, dude, I remember when Ihad $569 in my bank account and
three young children and apregnant wife.
You don't need to talk to meabout scarcity, okay, you don't
need to talk to me about less.
My back was against the wall.
I get it Right.
It's like pay the car bill orpay for food.
Well, after three months ofmaking those choices, guess what
(25:28):
happened?
They repoed the car.
They came at 10 o'clock atnight and pulled the car out
with all the car seats in it and10 o'clock at night, right out
of my garage.
So I'm speaking from a place ofsomeone who knows what it's been
like to have your back againstthe wall and taking that poor
lady who was my wife down withour fourth child pregnant, to a
bankruptcy to finalize thatnonsense because we had gone too
far, extended too much and hada lot of people who were like
(25:49):
this is an idiot, you needyou're an idiot, you need to get
a job.
Look, I told you he was all anidiot.
Now he's proving he's an idiot.
But my wife who stuck with meand went down there right, and
you know all your family andfriends.
You want to find out.
I think somebody famously saidthis once you can only find out
who your family and friendsreally are.
Go bankrupt, and then you'llfind quick who my real people
(26:10):
are, and that in itself isprobably more depressing and
heartbreaking than thebankruptcy itself.
There's worse things that canhappen, and that's finding out
what people really think aboutyou, right Not?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
what they think.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think but what they really think about you.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I love that.
You find the humor in it too.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Oh, now I do.
It's pretty funny now becauseI'm on the way on the other side
of it, but it wasn't funny then, wasn't funny for my wife god
bless her.
We're going down there anddoing the bankruptcy in this
dank you know basement in thecourthouse.
It's all gray and there's 20other poor souls down there.
These schmucks are crying likethe rest of us, all sad.
And then you know what in thehell?
And you think you're going intothis thing it's more like a
courthouse room and you're gonnago in front of the judge and
(26:48):
he's going to say you know, youdid these things wrong, boy, and
you need to get this right.
And why didn't you get this?
You're so stupid.
But in actuality we went into aconference room where there
were 20 tables, 20 foldingtables, all divided, with 20
judges all lined up, and you gota number and you walked in and
they signed you a number to atable with a guy who looked at
your folder, who was supposed tojudge your entire life in 20
(27:08):
minutes and that was bankruptcycourt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very weird, right, like Joeversus the volcano Weird If
you've ever seen that.
When he's living in thatbasement it's all dank.
It kind of felt just like that,right and and so you go through
there and it's just horrible.
My wife was the one person whostuck with me, right?
She's the one person who waslike we can do this, we'll
figure this out.
Like I trust you, you you'llget it done.
(27:30):
You do what you need to do.
Right now, I'm going to focuson the kids.
You focus on what you need toget this done.
And with that encouragementamongst the storm, with all the
other people, that was what Ineeded to just put my back
against the wall and go to workyeah, I got one of those too.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I mean, maybe that's why they came out that mother
day.
They stick with you, man.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah they're willing to ride through that dude yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
A lot of good.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
We're 18 years into our marriage now.
Yeah, it's been a fun ride,absolutely.
But the thing is, you know,automations and stuff, as you
were mentioned, really comethrough the systems and with all
the systems about now, there isso much automation that you can
literally run this from a truckwith Starlink.
You can run it on the road, youcan run it on the beach, you
can run it on 50 acres 60 acresnow in the country while you're
homeschooling your kids andhaving podcasts with people
(28:17):
using Starlink.
Really, there is opportunityeverywhere.
If you can set aside theexcuses, if you can put aside
the fear, if you can put asidethe what ifs.
Okay, you play the what if this, what if that?
What if there's no guarantee?
What if the money gets?
What if I?
What?
and what you're actually sayingis I have no confidence in
betting on myself, exactly rightI have no confidence, or your
(28:39):
team that's with you well, firstup, I'm that I'm going to do
the work, or that I know I'mgoing to do the work, or that I
know I'm going to be willing todedicate the time to put in the
work.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I'm not going to believe in you if you can't
believe in yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Well, if I can't push a button and magically have
money, you know, come into mybank account, then it's, then
it's all fake.
There's no truth to this right.
I used to have to go here Funnystory I used to go out and when
I was in college one of thethings I learned about how I
didn't want to in the winter inSioux City, iowa, up into South
(29:12):
Dakota, there, and I'll tell youwhat that is cold like you have
never felt before.
We had to quit.
One more two mornings we had toquit.
We were doing installation ofspeaker wire in new homes and we
were building sound systems inthese homes and we'd have to go
out and when it was all framedup, then you would go in and do
all this stuff.
Before they laid the sheet rockand all the other stuff.
And I was working for thislittle place called Flans
Electronics and really coolowners and they let me do a
(29:35):
three-month stint in betweensemesters.
That was my break.
Instead of going home, becauseI didn't want to go home, I went
and worked for three months inSioux City, iowa, installing in
between semesters.
I have never had hard work inmy entire life at that level.
I dug ditches before I'd doneother things, but until you've
actually stood on ladders andnegative 40 degree temperatures
and tried to install a speaker,why are you haven't tried that
hard?
And I remember these difficulttimes and I'm like man if I have
(29:59):
to put thought down, if I haveto get up and put effort in with
my brain and the keyboard, thenI got it pretty easy.
And when I'm not out in themiddle of the winter and
negative 40 degree temperatureis working with my hands in the
cold, and I think everybodyforgets that there is so much
opportunity out there that theyuse these kinds of excuses to
(30:19):
say they can't.
They play that.
What if game again, right?
What if?
What if?
What if?
Well, you're going to what ifyourself to death and never
actually know cause.
You didn't try.
But things are much harder thanfinding a product to sell on
the internet.
But things are much harder thanfinding a product to sell on
the internet, right?
So literally, it's get down toboat and they get down to mental
roadblocks.
At the end of the day, becauseall the systems, automations, ai
technologies, people willdeliver the products for you.
(30:41):
Oh, my goodness, how rough isthat?
Right?
The systems and technology ofthe internet are all online Now
we all get it.
I think what most peoplestruggle with is like what we
all get it.
I think what most peoplestruggle with is like what's the
process?
Because it can feel a littleoverwhelming.
It can be a lot of analysis,paralysis, that kicks in when
the opportunity is there.
I found mine in physicalproducts.
I was doing digital and it justmade sense to connect the
(31:03):
physical side to it.
So I see it.
When I put money in it, I had aproduct and a lot of people get
caught up in the digitalbecause, well, there's not
really a tacit response, atactile aspect to it.
There is nothing.
Now I can pick up a product andI've got it in my hands.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, and that's why I think truckers are built for
this.
Our listeners out there spendhours on the road.
They understand routes, supplychain and timing, and so they
kind of know a lot of thatbackground criteria by which we
(31:49):
sell is to make sure it'sprofitable.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So we don't sell the product that has a retail price
point lower than $50.
And we need to make sure it hasmore than $12 in net profit per
unit.
Why?
Because of Amazon fees,platform fees, marketing fees,
the cost of the product itself.
You have to stack those on thecost of goods so you know what
your net profit's going to be.
And then you have to do it insuch a way where you can market
and outmaneuver your competition.
(32:11):
Then if other things happen,like you know, trade wars and
nonsense with company countrieslet's just call it that.
I don't want you to get acontent strike if you put this
on YouTube because right nowthey don't like the T word, the
two T words, the air of theirforever's T word and the other
room T word.
They don't like those.
But the fact is it's happeninganyways.
And here's the thing, right,that is just a cost of business.
(32:32):
If your products and businesscan't handle it and you're
operating so razor thin becauseyou're providing low value,
razor thin product margins toyour consumers, there's your
opportunity right.
Level up that brand, chooseproduct that's 50 to 500 in
retail price point, make surethat is a great product, but
make sure that it's in demand.
That's the number one thing wework on make sure it's in demand
(32:52):
and then make sure you create agreat product.
And then just don't marry theproduct.
Create a brand instead.
Brands live on for so long, evenif you're not attached to it.
Dude like, do you smoke?
No, okay, do you if I said theword lucky strikes?
Do you know that brand?
Unfortunately, yes, yeah, okay,marlboro, you're still in smoke
, right?
No, okay, do you understand thepower of branding even though
(33:14):
you're not a consumer of it?
Look at that, right.
Can you tell me all thedifferent variations of the
products of those businesses?
No, right, but you know thebrand?
Yeah, brands live forever andproducts don't.
So we have to remember not tomarry our product, because there
are plenty of girlfriends tosteal, right, and with that, all
products have a life cycle.
(33:35):
So some products might last twoyears or four years or five
years, but brands live forever.
They really do.
As long as the business isaround, brands will live forever
.
So we have to focus on the brandcomponent.
There you go, because there aremore than enough products.
People say, well, it'ssaturated, there's too much
competition.
No one wants these products.
There are millions of productinnovation ideas.
They get to go into thesebrands millions of them.
(33:57):
That's not really the rightthing to say.
It's just an issue you don'tknow about, right To not realize
how many there are.
Everybody is an innovator.
There's only 1% of people whoactually invent right.
99% of product opportunitiesare innovations.
They all are.
So there's plenty ofinnovations out there and all
kinds of products andopportunities.
(34:17):
You just have to know how toget to that traffic.
And that's why I take newpeople who are aspiring
entrepreneurs into Amazon.
First, why 7,000 units a minuteare moving 24 seven.
So when you're when you'rerolling a truck, when you're
sleeping in the cab, when you'reat home, when you're on the
road, when you're doing anything, those products are selling for
you 24 seven.
Right, you're making money whenyou sleep.
(34:38):
That's the ultimate objective,right?
And that system is running allthe time and peak holiday times,
like you know, prime andholidays are running at 9,000
units a minute.
So it's an economic engineestablished already with the
supply chain that moves theproduct for you to the customers
.
It makes money 24 seven.
And there is where the biggestproblem can be solved for people
(34:59):
when it comes to what the heckdo I sell.
You go to the place where 49%of America buys its products
online.
49% of America buys hisproducts on Amazon.
The other 51% are direct andretail or online channels,
websites and other platformsright, or they go to retail.
But 49% it's a huge marketshare.
So I take brand new people towhere the market is right.
(35:21):
It is 10 times greater than theother marketplaces combined,
like Etsy and Wayfair and others, and it is now a model that
distributes on revenue par orjust greater than Walmart Right,
and behind that there's Targetand a couple of other retail
places that Amazon eats theirlunch.
All three of them combineddon't make up Amazon's revenues.
(35:42):
So you go to the place wherepeople want to buy products
sales fixes, everything Rightand then we find a product
that's in demand and we providethat product to them.
We have it manufactured, soit's ours.
We sell it into a business, notour personal account, and we
trade it like a real business.
And we say, hey, do you wantthis product?
And if they go, nah, five salesa day.
Okay, well, what about thisproduct?
Oh, 25 sales a day.
(36:04):
Oh, look, I'm on the target.
Now what am I going to do?
I'm going to hedgehog into thatproduct and say, well, what
about these 10 other variationsof this product?
Do you want one of those?
And I was like, oh yeah, I wantone of those too.
Why?
Because people are brand drivenwhen they start to get
connected, like if I tell youall you know, apple, iphone
people are fanboys and allAndroid people suck Like.
(36:24):
Somebody listening to thisright now is going to get pissed
, right yeah?
Because all of a sudden you'retaking offense, you're hitting
their brand right Like oh man,android people.
Iphone doesn't have the camera.
Android had the camera 10 yearsago and iPhone's just catching
up and you all have a bunch offamilies.
I don't care, it's a phone, itmakes phone calls, right.
But the end is that Apple hasdone a much better job base
because they made it really easyfor people to use and really
(36:46):
easy for them to understand.
So they'll buy the iWatch, theiPhone, the iMac, the iPad, and
then they give one to theirsignificant other or their
spouse and then their kids haveone pretty soon.
They're an Apple fan, you know20 devices deep.
So we do right.
So we do the same thing withour brand.
We do the same thing with ourbrand.
Once we launch onto thatproduct, it says hey, I want
that product from you.
Well, I'm going to give you 10other versions of that product
(37:09):
until you buy more product fromme, right?
Um, and it's kind ofoversimplifying the process, but
that's the game in e-commerceis to just provide.
I think a lot of people getcaught up that there's some
other complexities of course tothat, which is well, how do I
sell on that platform?
But that's a tactical thing andI could teach that to a 19 year
old high school dropout, whichI did, and he makes multi seven
(37:29):
figures a month.
Or I can teach it to my 16 yearold daughter, who also gets it.
So the only there's not alimiting belief by age that
these things can be done.
There's just your limitingbelief that you can do it.
And if you don't try, the fearof failure will be represented
when you give up too easily andsay the whole thing is a failure
because you didn't fight theprocess until you got successful
(37:50):
.
You've probably seen that memeout there with the guy who's
swinging the hammer and he'slike one swing away from the
diamond mine.
Have you seen that one?
That meme out there?
It's like it's right down tothe last moment and he gives up
at the last swing.
I went for my first marketingcampaign in the digital
marketing world.
I was 299 campaigns deep andabout 30,000 in the hole before
the first one took offprofitably.
(38:11):
Campaign number 300 took off.
Imagine if I'd given up at 200.
Yeah, that's rough.
People want to give up tooeasily.
There's such a low hangingfruit of opportunity right now,
with the systems andtechnologies we've had since I
watched the Internet come online, it is easier than ever for
people to make these businesseswork.
They just have to be willing totry to believe.
(38:31):
Like you said, they just got tobelieve, they got to try and
they have to go.
And if they failed some process, if it doesn't work exactly, if
they made a mistake, then youjust fix it.
You fix it and you keep movingforward.
And those are people who becomesuccessful in business and
literally anybody who's willingto get that mindset, adopt that
mindset and retrain themselvesor they're inherently a part of
that mindset already and they'rejust looking for a path.
(38:53):
They will be successful inbusiness and just going to take
some time.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Wow.
So looking ahead, e-commerceworld is fast.
What's coming in the future forAmazon sellers?
What can they prepare for?
I mean, right now, everything'son sale, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Well, it feels like it doesn, it, um?
But here's the thing.
I mean, there's still a hugeamount of inventory moving.
There's a lot of fear andscarcity because people are
paying too much attention to thenews.
But let me remind some people,cause we'll go back in the way
back machine for just a secondback in 2020.
Everybody remember that, causeit wasn't that long ago, but it
feels like a lifetime, right?
We were paying $3,900 for acontainer in December 2019.
(39:29):
By the end of the first quarterDecember 2020, that had risen
to $25,000 per container.
Okay, $3,900 here moved to$25,000 per container.
Do the math on that, right,what they're talking about.
Tariffs just came down from145% down.
It's going to bottom outsomewhere around 30%, which is
nothing compared to what we werepaying in 2020 and 21 and 22
(39:52):
before that all came back down.
But the problem is, everyone wasfocused on the news and
pandemic and all this otherstuff over here and they weren't
focused on the stuff that wewere facing at the traction
level down in the weeds.
And now that no one has any ofthat and all they're doing is
focused on the media and beingall polarized and politicized
and watching too much freakingMSN, they're all like oh, the
products, my products, john, Ican't get my slave labor to make
my products anymore.
(40:13):
What am I going to do?
Like they're freaking out?
Like, come on, people pulltogether.
The end result is that it wasnever more expensive and there
are like 53 ships on their wayinto Los Angeles right now.
So there is no real degradationof product.
You haven't seen it disappearfrom the markets.
It probably won't.
So it's all going to right size.
It's just a big hullabaloowhich is next is going to give
us opportunity to onshore moreproduct creation, maximize our
(40:36):
ability to do economic trade andbartering.
The table right now is set sothat China becomes somebody we
can move all of our productsinto, which we've never been
able to do.
This has always been a one waystreet the European Union,
others are all capitulating aswell very quickly.
So we're going to start sendingproducts into that.
So not only will we have theUnited States, we're about to
have 10 countries open up to usexcuse me where we can make real
money moving products intothose countries.
(40:58):
Never seen that before.
There is a generational wealthmoment occurring right now that
you can see tactically from myvantage point that most people
can't see.
So we're bullish.
We're moving millions ofdollars of product into the
market by the fourth quarter.
We are buying companies thatare product heavy and ready to
go to market.
We got our first letter ofintent on one right now and we
(41:19):
are being bullish and those whoare paying attention coming
along with the ride my internalclient base they're doing the
same thing because that rubberband is pulling back and it's
going to snap, and when it does,we're going to see a
generational change opportunitylike no one has seen in this
country before, and I'm here forit, man.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Let's go.
That's amazing.
I love the opportunity and theway you talk about it, the way
you spread that joy.
I mean that's amazing, it'scontagious.
I think a lot of people need topick up on that, if they can,
versus the negative because,like I said, it's going to slow
them down.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah.
If you think there's no productopportunities, you're not
paying attention.
If you think it's too costlyfor people to buy the average
purchase price on Amazon rightnow is $69.
Okay.
If you think that it has sloweddown economically, it has not.
What's usually happening ismoney shifts.
It's like a river.
It flows as a current, it movesand changes directions and
sometimes it feels closer to youin life and sometimes it feels
farther away, and sometimes inbusiness.
(42:08):
You see it, you have to moveand shake, you have to change
things up and the money justflows like a river, and right
now the river is changing course.
It is starting to go adifferent direction.
For those who are willing totake the risk to get out there
and start a business, maybe evenin the physical product
business world, the slingshotramifications of this are going
to be huge.
One of our clients started abusiness in the middle of that
(42:35):
whole thing in 2020, took himabout nine months longer to get
to market than would normallyoccur, but he stuck it out
because he saw the opportunity.
Five years later, it's a $15million a year business.
He rode that slingshot up thebackside.
When everybody else was tooafraid to go into the market.
He went into the market.
His brand and many of ourbrands have all doubled and
tripled and quadrupled and gonethrough the roof because we were
willing to be bullish, and Isee the exact same happening
right now.
(42:55):
So if you're on the fence abouta product, an opportunity, a
business, if you're thinkingphysical products and maybe
starting your own e-commercecompany, this is your window.
Folks, even Bank of America,forrester Research and the
Department of Commerce havepredicted there's about 21
(43:15):
trillion in assets that arecoming online in the next 10
years.
The swap is happening.
It's happening in real time.
The economic systems, the trade, the cryptocurrencies and
utility currencies to power thatindustry are already coming
online.
There is huge wealth coming forthose who are positioning
themselves, taking some risksnow to see this come in.
And I would just warn everybodyto be cautious, of course, and
to not risk money that'srequired to keep the car
payments going or whatever'snecessary so you can keep things
(43:37):
rolling.
Trust me when I say I know that, but to also not be so afraid
that you don't take advantage ofit.
You're either going to be in itas a consumer, and that may be
your, your choice, but you couldalso potentially be a producer
and have even greater outcome.
If you're willing to dosomething for three to five
years that no one else iswilling to do, then you can live
like nobody else can after thatI love it, man.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
a lot of truckers out there that depended on a
company company drivers and yeah, for something that they could
do, um, you know that could growand create a better future for
themselves, instead of relyingon a company that, like you said
, you don't know when your timeis up.
You mentioned that about IBM.
You feel secure, you're gettingthat paycheck and you're
thinking everything's going tobe okay, doing great.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
All of a sudden, bam number's called Great yeah One
of them is, you know, being avictim and another one's being
empowered.
You know, if you have a chanceto start that thing, get your
mind going, get that thing going, get it rolling.
If something happens to you,you're going to feel empowered
to just double down on whatyou're doing to see the results
faster, versus waiting for thatmoment to occur.
And then it hits you like a tonof bricks and then you go into
(44:42):
panic mode and you start makingbad decisions.
It just happens.
We've all been there.
So I would just caution you bylistening today that if you're
thinking about making the effort, you better get going.
It doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
You don't try.
Like you said, listen to theright people.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Yeah, get some help.
It doesn't hurt to get help.
I'll tell you what.
There's a lot going on and itmakes it hard to make decisions
these days If you don't havesome experience or camaraderie
around you.
You know to, to build thatnetwork in the area you're
focused on and in whateveryou're doing.
If you want to run a sidehustle that you think might be a
business, if you're going tosell a software or do affiliate
marketing or run physicalproducts, whatever you're going
to do, find the company, get inwith whatever they're doing,
(45:21):
listen and learn, because it'swho you know that gets you in
and it's what you know thatkeeps you there.
And if you're willing to put inthe work you get.
The right networking can changeeverything.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Wow, hey, you're saying all the right things, you
know.
I thank you so much.
Uh, everything you said is veryinsightful and also practical
for many people out therelistening, and you know they're
going to hear this and realizethat they've already have they
got the mindset that they justneed to do them, learn the
method.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, yeah, the boat.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, the fricking boat man.
Yeah, the freaking boat man.
It tested out.
Have some faith.
Yeah, those who want to learnmore and grab your book, can you
tell us a little about mostalmost automated income with fba
?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
that's right now on amazon yeah, well, I don't have
an audiobook, so if you have achance to grab one, don't drive
and read, please, uh.
But there's a copy of it onamazon.
If you feel comfortablegrabbing it there, you can go to
my.
There's a link, I believe, in acalled a voltage dm.
If you feel comfortablegrabbing it there, you can go to
my.
There's a link, I believe, in a, called a voltage dmcom forward
slash free book and there's acode, I think, that will be
given out, if I'm not mistaken,for 10, 10 free copies of the
book.
Is that correct?
(46:17):
Yeah, yeah, so we're givingaway 10 free copies.
There'll be a code below youguys.
Go check it out If you want tobe readers or voltage dmcom to
learn more about, about ourstrategies, who we're looking
for as operators and owners totake up that mantle and create a
great business, and then maybeyou get it to the position it
becomes a saleable asset and wehave a conversation about
acquiring it.
That's the upside.
Potential for anybody inbusiness is to build an asset
(46:39):
with the meaning and end, andbuild it from the beginning with
the end in mind, because it isworth more on the end than at
any time during the businessbuilding phase.
Build those assets.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Right there you go, All right.
So, truckers out there, youknow you guys are on the move,
moving freight.
Now it's time to own your brandtoo.
So if you're ready to buildsomething that works while you
roll, this is your sign.
So thanks again, Neil, anduntil next time, keep rolling,
keep growing and keep deliveringmore than just freight.
So
Welcome back to that's Delivered, where stories
on the road meet innovation,mindset and real opportunity.
If you've been with us for awhile, you know that I love
talking about ways to grow,whether it's behind the wheel or
just behind a business, and Iguess today helps folks do just
that.
Turn a side hustle into systemsand systems into income that
delivers even when you're offthe clock.
Meet Neil Twa, the founder ofVoltage Digital Marketing,
(00:33):
author of one of the world'sleading experts in Amazon
fulfillment by Amazon FBA.
Over the past decade, neil hashelped over 45,000 people start
and grow to scale a successfule-commerce brand, and his new
book, almost Automated Incomewith FBA, lays out how to build
a successful lifestyle-drivenbusiness using the systems in
(00:56):
place and strategies he teachesevery day.
Here is where we get interestingfor all drivers out there.
If you're a trucker and you'realready moving freight, but you
want to also own your ownproduct, how do you do that?
What if you could do that bydelivering the loads and
building the brand at the sametime?
That's where we're going todive into this today and learn
(01:18):
how we could do that.
Turn your knowledge, logistics,downtime on the road and
entrepreneur mindset into abusiness that earns while you
roll.
So let's get into it.
Neil, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Doing great today, brother.
Thanks for bringing me on.
Yeah, it's great here.
It's always great to haveanother podcaster on the show
(01:39):
and talk about the great thingsyou're doing over there.
Man at Voltage.
Man, you're doing great things.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm having some fun, you know I've been.
Uh, like I said earlier, I'mtoo stressed to be blessed or
two, oh wait, no that's tooblessed to be stressed.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's it right there Be stressed.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, you know it's uh.
Yeah, there's a lot of goodthings that wrap into that.
My mind wraps around a whole,many, a lot of good things.
I get to hang out with myfamily, I get to have fun, I get
to be blessed to meet wonderfulpeople like you, and, yeah,
that's just a good thing and Ienjoy it.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Nice, yeah, I like it too.
It gets the people going, itgets me going.
It gets me thinking about waysthat, hey, if they want to slow
you down, yeah, add some stressto people, that'll really slow
them down.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So first of all, I want to see how you got started
from the beginning.
How did you get this going toin terms of technology and
business and watching theinternet come online, I was
always fascinated by what itcould do, and while a lot of my
friends went into the technologyside, the systems and support
of it, I was always about how doI make money with it, make
business, how do we createsolutions that power things?
And so it was so new you had tokind of jump in early, so I
(03:02):
just jumped in and figured outhow to do it, taught myself
programming, and that just gaveme sort of a passion for the
technology and the business andeventually led me into doing
more like leading and digitalmarketing kind of stuff.
Affiliate marketingparticularly.
I was on doing mobile ads and Iended up with a dating app that
turned out to do really well inthe mobile space.
But I just realized, as thatstarted to change, I didn't
(03:23):
control the offer, I didn'tcontrol the actual outcome.
Affiliate marketing is a greatway to start a little side
hustle, promoting other people'sproducts and getting a
commission, but when you don'tcontrol the end narrative, you
don't control the rest of theproduct, you don't control the
ultimate outcome.
And as I got into 2011 and 12,that was one of the big things
on my mind, and someone I knewhad said, hey, I'm flipping some
(03:44):
products.
I saw it on Facebook market,facebook's page.
And he's like, hey, I'mflipping some products on Amazon
.
And I'm like, hey, I hit him up, what are you doing here?
How are you doing that?
And it was like eBay.
I don't want anything to dowith it.
I don't want to house him on myhouse.
I can't be.
No, no, no, no.
They have this thing calledfulfilled by Amazon and you send
your products into them andthen they ship it to the
(04:04):
customer.
And, as of 2009, they hadbought a logistics freight
management company that doesplane, trains and automobiles
and they were shipping productslike crazy.
And so Amazon bought them andrebranded them and turned them
into what we know them today asthose Amazon trucks that show up
at your house all the time.
And so I just thought the youknow thinking forwards.
You know solution orientedpeople in business who want to
(04:27):
overcome problems, want toadvance themselves in their life
or their business or theirfamily or their wealth or
whatever.
They always think forward.
They think solutions.
They're not big on thinking inthe past.
You know what do I do wrong,what happened in the past, and
they don't sort of use that as abadge of honor.
They're people who aretenacious and go-getters and
they think about what they cando to solve problems and create
opportunities.
And that just happened to besomething that, through time and
(04:47):
troubles and major failures andopportunities, I kind of
learned to become that personand kind of conditioned my mind
into it.
And so when I saw Amazon, I'mlike this is future opportunity.
I see where the road is, I'mpacking here, I see where this
thing could go and I just jumpedinto it full force and started
launching products.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nice, that's really good.
I like the energy when you,when you aim upwards, right
that's as versus aimingdownwards you you see good
things, you see better outcomes,so great.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, you aim to fail forward, because nothing is a
perfect process.
You're going to fail at steps,you're going to fail at
processes.
As I tell my four daughters, asI tell them you know you're
trying and doing things.
You know you have to realizethat your success is going to
come through the failures.
So just keep going, just keeptrying.
Fail forward, fail forward,fail up, don't fail out, just
keep trying.
And I'm trying to instill thatin them every day.
Wow, Four daughters man, yeah,we get to homeschool to do, um,
(05:41):
we've, we've built a life aroundaround what we call lifestyle
by design.
My wife stays home.
She used to be an RN and BSNand after the first child we
kind of retired her because sherealized there's no way I'm
handing this baby out the system, I'm not leaving this child.
And I was like, well, that'sfine, I'm, you know this cute,
fuzzy, furry, little lovelything.
I can't let go of it either.
So we'll figure it out.
So we just made a choice whenwe were first married to do that
(06:04):
.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Beautiful.
Yeah, that's a good decision.
And then can you break downwhat it means to almost automate
income.
Why is that idea such a gamechanger?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, they created all
these systems.
There's technology, there'sinfrastructure.
The platform we're riding onwas an innovation of an
entrepreneur who built abusiness around this platform,
and so, you know, amazon had anentrepreneurial feel to it,
still does in many cases, eventhough they've got some
corporatocracy.
And I'm not a total fan boybecause I ride on their channel
as what we call an incubatorputting products on the market
(06:35):
and determining can we capturethe demand that exists for those
products and then moving theminto multiple sales channels and
evolving a way we call aholistic e-commerce company
right, not just a single saleschannel.
And so, as I was learning howto do that, one of the biggest
components we discovered was theprocess by which we determine a
product has upside potential,can sell and sell well and has a
(06:57):
decently long life cycle to it,right.
And part of that process of notflipping the products was
realizing we needed to createbrands If we married the brands
and not our product.
And every product we sent tomarket was an opportunity to
find out if the market wanted itfrom us.
Not smart enough to tell themarket what it wants, but smart
enough to understand what themarket needs and wants and try
(07:18):
to prepare something for themarket and they'll buy it from
us instead of somebody else.
And with that kind of thoughtprocess, while I started it with
the concept of a little sidehustle, I really realized the
opportunity was to think aboutit like a real business, treat
it like a real business, act andfunction in the time, energy,
attention and money what we calla team effort of making that go
(07:40):
out and letting all of thoseaspects of that team effort work
in favor of the business.
So what that created was theopportunity to leverage systems
literally that were beingcreated, developed and billions
of dollars are flowing intothese systems across all of
these platforms, online right,and leverage that to get my
product to the customer, lastmile to the customer, and not
(08:01):
have to have my own warehousesand freight and shipping and
trucks and people and all theother stuff that goes along with
that, so that I could free mytime up to be a part of my
family, to do life, to createthe opportunities that I wanted
with my home and also to havethe financial component of that
be a reward for those efforts.
And learning how to put thatpurpose and value first meant
(08:21):
that, while profits areobviously a very important part
of the business and we shouldtalk about that what it
ultimately, in the path of 18years, literally getting to the
point where I am now realizingthat there's what I call the
five F's and one of them isn'tthe F you think it is the first
is faith.
Faith in yourself that you'llkeep going.
Faith that you'll find theright people.
(08:42):
Faith in God.
Faith in things that make senseto you.
I have a faith in Jesus Christand that faith is what allows me
to go out and realize that Idon't trust the world for my
confidence.
I don't trust the world for mygain.
I trust a faith in the heavenlyfather.
From that I understand where myfamily and friends fit in all of
that.
Sometimes friends become morelike family.
Sometimes your family doesn'tunderstand.
(09:03):
Sometimes they're the mostcritical.
Sometimes they're the hardestto overcome.
Sometimes generational cursesand problems with them are
imparted on you, which makes itdifficult for you to see the
opportunity and to see your pathforward.
Sometimes friends don't do that.
They don't have that historicalthing.
They'll lift you up, they'llpick you up, they may let you
stay on your couch to help youget it done.
Sometimes family doesn't dothat, sometimes they do right,
(09:24):
that leads to the opportunityfor finances.
Right, as you put that purposeand value forward.
If you're not just thinkingabout yourself, the finances or
the profit of finance will come.
And all of these have profit inthem.
Right, all of them areprofitable.
Everybody hears word profit andgoes straight to finances.
But if you don't have a profitin relationship or faith or
other things, you're not goingto profit in the world, right?
(09:45):
And the final component of thatis freedom.
It's the baseline that stacksup the whole pyramid, it's the
foundation of all of thesethings.
Without freedom, there's nochoice.
Without the understanding ofthe freedoms you have, you will
not get to gain the rest ofthose things and you will fight
for them.
When you can see that they'llhave done correctly, they'll be
given to you freely wow, that'spower pack man.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That that's a book in itself.
Right there, I mean a book initself.
Yeah, I can recommend one ifyou want to go read it.
Yeah, uh, I was thinking thatyou know, faith, people have a
hard time with that because it'ssomething they can't really put
your hands on.
Yeah, it's hard to see it.
Uh, you really got to trainyour mind to be able to absorb
it.
You do and accept it you do.
(10:29):
I mean that's huge.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, it is a whole lot about being an entrepreneur
and a business person, as we putfaith in our willingness to
solve solutions or to findpeople that will help us solve
those solutions, or to createopportunities for other people
to be involved in that process.
Create opportunities for otherpeople to be involved in that
process and to do it without theidea that it's the world as the
only place where thatopportunity can be valued.
It can be valued by the peoplewho are employed in, or the
(10:53):
people who get the money fromthe logistics, or the people who
get money from other componentsof the business, who have lives
and things that revolve aroundit.
It's serving more in a servantleadership than just yourself.
And that's really hard tounderstand why, because you know
, when I was an employee uh upto uh, 2007, when I worked for
IBM, um, my faith was that theywere going to keep honoring
their agreement.
(11:14):
What happens if they don't rightRight?
What happens if your numbergets called right?
Then, all of a sudden, yourfaith in the concept that you
did the right work and showedthe time and put the effort in
is not rewarded by theirwillingness to continue to honor
that agreement.
That's a business.
It's a role we play and whenyou have to step out of that
role it's like the proverbialstepping out on the water.
It's getting out of the boatand realizing that if you don't
(11:35):
put your trust and faith in theworld, there's something greater
to put your trust and faith in.
So then you have more freedomto go out and to fight the good
fight in the world, becauseyou're no longer using the world
as your crutch or your excuse,and literally that means your
opportunity begins at the end ofyour excuses.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
That's neat.
I like that.
It's almost like Peter walkingon water.
He fell in the water too.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Right, so we all fall .
The point is that we keepswimming.
Yeah, he did, and he tried, hetried and we tried and I just
don't.
So many people are in the boat,right, yelling at the water to
come to them.
Yeah, right, they don't want toget out of the boat, they're
just yelling for the water tocome to them, and if the water
doesn't come to them, it's all ascam, everything's scam.
Nothing works, it's all fake.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Everyone wants to take advantage of been
victimized, but I have neverbeen the victim of something I
couldn't, uh, mentally controlmyself.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And then, what can I control as I tell my children?
What can you control?
100 of your emotions and 100 ofyour actions you can control
accountability.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I like that good, good father there.
So, man, you, you've taught,you're doing great as a father.
Like I said, you're admittingto challenges of life.
The lessons for about 45,000students.
You've been a coach for them.
What's the most common mistakesor mindset that blocks people
from keeping them fromsucceeding?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, to be fair, I've had thousands of students
have about 45,000 followers onTikTok.
No-transcript is to buildpeople up.
(13:31):
I used to make employees ofpeople and then realize that's
not really empowering and it'snot a true relationship, any
more than it was for me when Iwas an employee.
So what I decided to do insteadwas change and invert the
process and help people becomeowners of their own success.
Empower them through tools,technology and people and
(13:51):
processes to enable them,through my systems, to be
successful as they walk theprofit process of building their
own physical product business.
And then, when they becomesuccessful, there's
opportunities to partner withthem, to be an operator,
controls with them, to help themwith our business as we help
them with theirs, and to givemore upside and greater
potential over a longer periodof time with less people.
(14:12):
So I have no courses or programsor and there's nothing here for
anybody listening to this tobuy from me.
Today there is the realizationthat if an owner and an operator
become successful and I'vehelped them do that then we have
more of a level playing fieldin our relationship and then
that opens the doors to allthese wonderful opportunities we
can do together over a longerperiod of time.
So, as we mentor people andhelp them with our software and
(14:34):
technology, I own nine brands.
We run nine different productbrand lines that we control
within our business.
So we are operators first andforemost, and with that, then we
know how to build and growthese brands seven, eight
figures and as I give people theopportunity to mentor and coach
with us, they become CEOoperators of their own brands.
And there's a lot more that wecan do together.
(14:55):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That's nice, um, and success doesn't come alone
Teamwork.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate ofthat.
When we work togethercohesively, we can accomplish so
much more.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Absolutely.
It's a win-win in that way.
Yeah, and I have what's calledthe first right to refusal for
everybody who works with me thatwhen their business is four and
five years out and borrowing aterm from real estate, we have a
gentleman's agreement that iftheir company is ready for an
exit and meets the buy boxcriteria then my company will
look to acquire them.
And I'm part of a company calledPatriot Growth Capital and that
is a veteran backed, veteranfunded, veteran organized,
(15:31):
veteran operated business thathelped 16,000 veterans last year
.
You can check them out atPatriot Growth Capital dot com.
If you're a veteran, you should.
They're empowering families andveterans forward and as part of
our initiative to buy companiesand bring them under the
control of our brand, then weare employing veterans into that
, certain veterans who have anopportunity and proficiency to
become a CEO operator after10,000 hours of proficiency in
(15:55):
about four to five years theyhave an opportunity to buy the
company away from us, givingthem a generational lift up, and
we have a line item in ourbusiness to give them the
capital down payment necessaryto acquire that after five years
.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Beautiful, beautiful, great work there.
So you're not just sellingstuff online, you're actually
building a brand.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Building businesses.
What's that?
Yep Building businesses thatare brand driven.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, Perfect.
You know there's one strategythat listing tweaks or that
makes a business impact early on.
What would you say is the beststrategy to go about that when
they?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
kind of get.
Yeah Well, you know, honestly,the most successful companies
that we run or have ran andbased on the ones that we
watched weren't successfulusually come down to the
aptitude of the operator.
If they see things kind offuture oriented and solution
driven like, this is a problemI'm going to solve.
This is a normal aspect ofbusiness.
(16:54):
Problem solving is looking foropportunities to create value,
to create a difference in theproduct or the brand.
If they intrinsically kind oflook more positively on the
aspects of output, then they aretypically more successful in
building their business.
If there's someone whotypically laments about current
situations or past situationsand you hear them lament and
talk about those more, they'retypically more in the past.
(17:15):
Therefore they're not futuresuccess oriented.
It's in the language and lingoof their person.
If they hang on to troubles andthey use them as a battering
ram for the problems they have,that's what we call
commiserating.
If, again, they're looking atsolutions and focus.
If they have no experience ine-com and have no product, we
can teach them how to becomesuccessful in that process
because by nature they areinclined to be problem solvers,
(17:43):
to not see every problem as somebrick on an imaginary wall that
they keep building up in theirmind.
But they see every opportunityto go around that, to solve it,
to be tenacious and to figuretheir way through.
They just need the path and theopportunity and the right
people to help them forward andthen they turn into amazing
operators, right.
They turn into people whoreally understand the
opportunity that's been given.
So really it gets down tomindset.
Whenever I interview somebodywho's furious about talking to
me in terms of a mentoring role,I run them through what's
(18:06):
called a DISC profile.
You ever heard of that?
A D-I-S Well, real quick, youcan Google the details, but it's
a simple.
It's a simple process by whichthey answer a series of
questions.
It takes about 20 minutes.
The output is not like an INFG,feel good.
You know what's my favoritecolor kind of stuff.
I like long ones for the beach.
No, this is like what's youraptitude toward business?
(18:28):
How do you see problem solving,how do you answer the questions
?
And it categorizes it into fourthings D dominant, I influencer
, s supporting and Ccompassionate.
And in that way you see theoutput of their person aligning
with a particular role inbusiness and the output of that
is to help them understand sortof a strengths, weaknesses,
(18:49):
opportunities, threat analysis,things that might threaten their
opportunity to be successful,the things that are
opportunities that they can dowell or even do better.
Where are their weaknesses?
So it can be identified.
If part of their weakness istheir consistency, then
operating a business may not bethe best way for them if they
don't have an operator who cansupport them.
(19:09):
Okay, it means that you need tounderstand where your strengths
are and then you need to fillin the gap on your weaknesses.
If you're great at selling andleading the ideas and pushing
the business forward, thenyou're usually going to be very
terrible at operating.
The consistency, thefollow-through, is going to be
difficult for you If you'resomebody who follows through,
shows up, does the work, puts inthe effort, but find it
(19:31):
difficult to be the sales guy,the business guy, the one who
goes out and drums up thebusiness.
You're going to suffer inbusiness and I see that in a lot
of smaller and mid-sizedbusinesses.
When they get going is becausethey try to wear all those hats.
They don't really understandwhat they're good at and what
they should be doing, and sothey kind of fill all the roles
with half the effort.
So my strength in business, mystrength in being the CEO and my
(19:54):
position, the businessdevelopment, the relationship,
the seeing the path forward sowe don't run into icebergs.
You know staying at the top andkind of making sure that I see
the waves, I see the boats, Isee everything rolling.
I'm trying to avoid theicebergs, I'm trying to move the
whole ship forward.
It's all our brands, all ourpeople, all this engine.
My partner is the guy down inthe wheelhouse.
His name is Reed and in 12years of knowing the guy, he is
(20:16):
the operations guy, he is thetactical guy.
He pays attention to thedetails, he has a CFO mindset.
He understands where the wateris, he knows where we're going.
It's his job to ensure theengines keep running.
Everything is operating asexpected, we're meeting our
numbers, we're stayingprofitable, we're pushing the
engine of the business forward.
(20:37):
That's two people in one brain,right, and I see a lot of
people try to do all of thatfrom the very beginning and I
know how that looks.
Ask me how I know, dude.
First, three to four years in mybusiness after leaving the
corporate world, yeah, I triedto do everything myself and I
was failing at it miserably.
If I sold the business, then Ihad trouble delivering the
business.
But then when I focused ondelivering the business, there
(20:57):
was nobody to sell the businessRight.
And so we ended up with thismantra over time, realizing that
sales fixes everything.
And when you start to sell thebusiness and learn how to become
the lead practitioner, ifyou're the CEO or the top end of
that business, it is your jobto sell that business.
That is it.
You need to figure out who candeliver it.
(21:17):
You understand what I'm saying?
You solve that problem and therest of the other problems go
away Right.
Then, if you do it really well,you have a new set of problems,
which is when the money comesand things go really well.
You got a new set of problemslike figuring out who to trust
with your money, how to investyour money, how to be smart and
keep more of it, how to empowerother people to keep going.
(21:38):
You got new problems to solve,but you should still be solving
them on the top end of drivingthe business, and I see way too
many business owners too focusedon just the operations, which
is important because you shouldprovide a quality product or
service, but they don't focusenough on selling the business.
They don't know who to sell toand how to make sure they
communicate with them reallywell and they lose focus on
those offers and opportunitiesto drive that business forward
(22:00):
and the whole thing suffersbecause they can't ride.
As we say in the country, youcan't ride two horses with one
ass.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So pick one, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I know a nice saying that was told to me.
Yeah, yeah, I know a nicesaying that was told to me.
Nothing happens until there's asale or sign on the line for a
contract.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
When the money hits the bank.
That's all that matters, anddon't celebrate until it does
right.
Until then the deal is not done.
You got to get them.
Truck drivers Got to get thatdeal done.
Can't pick that load, I've gotto have that money.
It's the way it works.
But here's the thing aboutbusiness.
I think a lot of it.
Just the last part of thatcomment with your question.
When you don't know what youdon't know, you're going to fall
victim to the market.
(22:34):
And I fell victim to the marketwhen I wasn't willing to listen
to what people wanted from meor make sure I understood what I
was going to give to them,because I was literally in two
minds I was in the mind oftrying to sell and the mind of
trying to deliver.
When I started to focus on themind, it says okay, I want to
drive this business forward.
They say that the you knowmentor appears when the student
(22:58):
is ready.
Well, this guy appeared.
His name is Mark.
He worked in the town near us.
He gave me a shot at acontracting job.
I realized, as a small businessowner, that he was doing those
things right, and so I was likeyes, I'll take this thing.
I want to be next to you so Ican glean information and learn
at what're doing right.
And he taught me the mantra ofsales fixes everything.
And he's a consummate salesprofessional and he had aligned
a development and delivery teambehind him for the products that
(23:19):
he was serving and I saw heorganized that.
I saw how he actually made thatbusiness work and he was very
good at it.
And so he taught me the art ofthe sell you know from informed
consent and from the opportunityto position the right person
and the right offer at the righttime and to not force sales or
end up being scammy used carsalesmen, with people being an
offer of integrity anddelivering with integrity.
(23:41):
And that was the greatestlesson I ever learned.
And in the five years after Ilearned that I had 10 management
professionals now in my companywho were doing the business.
It was my job to sell and theywere delivering.
And as soon as I unlocked thatcomprehension, I was moving
through.
You ever hear of the Kiyosakiquadrants?
You ever heard of that?
Maybe somebody listening tothis call has heard it.
Rob Kiyosaki and the rich dad,poor dad guy.
(24:03):
Yeah, okay, he also had thequadrants.
You know the four quadrantsright Of employed, self-employed
, entrepreneur, a business owner, an investor.
If we're progressing intobusiness and we're considering
business, not a side hustle or ahobby business.
Even if we started on the side,even if we do something to move
ourselves forward while we'remaybe on a truck roll or doing
(24:24):
anything else, the goal is notto think about it like a side
hustle.
The goal is not to limit yourbelief or scarcity that it's a
few thousand extra dollars amonth I'm shooting for just so I
can make ends meet.
It is the real understandingand if I put the right time,
energy, attention and money intothis, it will no longer be a
side hustle.
It could be a life-changingopportunity.
And if I truly believe that andget out of the boat, that
(24:46):
should be my predominant focus.
It should be to turn somethingI'm doing on the side into that
full-time thing, with theexpectation that I'm going to
leave behind and keep movingforward.
If I'm only treating it like aside hustle or hobby business,
I'm staying right where I am,I'm saying I don't want to move
forward and therefore I'mlimiting my upside potential, my
opportunity, and I'm actuallyoperating in a scarcity mindset.
(25:07):
People will think, well, a fewthousand extra months is
abundance to me.
Well, dude, I remember when Ihad $569 in my bank account and
three young children and apregnant wife.
You don't need to talk to meabout scarcity, okay, you don't
need to talk to me about less.
My back was against the wall.
I get it Right.
It's like pay the car bill orpay for food.
Well, after three months ofmaking those choices, guess what
(25:28):
happened?
They repoed the car.
They came at 10 o'clock atnight and pulled the car out
with all the car seats in it and10 o'clock at night, right out
of my garage.
So I'm speaking from a place ofsomeone who knows what it's been
like to have your back againstthe wall and taking that poor
lady who was my wife down withour fourth child pregnant, to a
bankruptcy to finalize thatnonsense because we had gone too
far, extended too much and hada lot of people who were like
(25:49):
this is an idiot, you needyou're an idiot, you need to get
a job.
Look, I told you he was all anidiot.
Now he's proving he's an idiot.
But my wife who stuck with meand went down there right, and
you know all your family andfriends.
You want to find out.
I think somebody famously saidthis once you can only find out
who your family and friendsreally are.
Go bankrupt, and then you'llfind quick who my real people
(26:10):
are, and that in itself isprobably more depressing and
heartbreaking than thebankruptcy itself.
There's worse things that canhappen, and that's finding out
what people really think aboutyou, right Not?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
what they think.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think but what they really think about you.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I love that.
You find the humor in it too.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Oh, now I do.
It's pretty funny now becauseI'm on the way on the other side
of it, but it wasn't funny then, wasn't funny for my wife god
bless her.
We're going down there anddoing the bankruptcy in this
dank you know basement in thecourthouse.
It's all gray and there's 20other poor souls down there.
These schmucks are crying likethe rest of us, all sad.
And then you know what in thehell?
And you think you're going intothis thing it's more like a
courthouse room and you're gonnago in front of the judge and
(26:48):
he's going to say you know, youdid these things wrong, boy, and
you need to get this right.
And why didn't you get this?
You're so stupid.
But in actuality we went into aconference room where there
were 20 tables, 20 foldingtables, all divided, with 20
judges all lined up, and you gota number and you walked in and
they signed you a number to atable with a guy who looked at
your folder, who was supposed tojudge your entire life in 20
(27:08):
minutes and that was bankruptcycourt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very weird, right, like Joeversus the volcano Weird If
you've ever seen that.
When he's living in thatbasement it's all dank.
It kind of felt just like that,right and and so you go through
there and it's just horrible.
My wife was the one person whostuck with me, right?
She's the one person who waslike we can do this, we'll
figure this out.
Like I trust you, you you'llget it done.
(27:30):
You do what you need to do.
Right now, I'm going to focuson the kids.
You focus on what you need toget this done.
And with that encouragementamongst the storm, with all the
other people, that was what Ineeded to just put my back
against the wall and go to workyeah, I got one of those too.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I mean, maybe that's why they came out that mother
day.
They stick with you, man.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah they're willing to ride through that dude yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
A lot of good.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
We're 18 years into our marriage now.
Yeah, it's been a fun ride,absolutely.
But the thing is, you know,automations and stuff, as you
were mentioned, really comethrough the systems and with all
the systems about now, there isso much automation that you can
literally run this from a truckwith Starlink.
You can run it on the road, youcan run it on the beach, you
can run it on 50 acres 60 acresnow in the country while you're
homeschooling your kids andhaving podcasts with people
(28:17):
using Starlink.
Really, there is opportunityeverywhere.
If you can set aside theexcuses, if you can put aside
the fear, if you can put asidethe what ifs.
Okay, you play the what if this, what if that?
What if there's no guarantee?
What if the money gets?
What if I?
What?
and what you're actually sayingis I have no confidence in
betting on myself, exactly rightI have no confidence, or your
(28:39):
team that's with you well, firstup, I'm that I'm going to do
the work, or that I know I'mgoing to do the work, or that I
know I'm going to be willing todedicate the time to put in the
work.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I'm not going to believe in you if you can't
believe in yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Well, if I can't push a button and magically have
money, you know, come into mybank account, then it's, then
it's all fake.
There's no truth to this right.
I used to have to go here Funnystory I used to go out and when
I was in college one of thethings I learned about how I
didn't want to in the winter inSioux City, iowa, up into South
(29:12):
Dakota, there, and I'll tell youwhat that is cold like you have
never felt before.
We had to quit.
One more two mornings we had toquit.
We were doing installation ofspeaker wire in new homes and we
were building sound systems inthese homes and we'd have to go
out and when it was all framedup, then you would go in and do
all this stuff.
Before they laid the sheet rockand all the other stuff.
And I was working for thislittle place called Flans
Electronics and really coolowners and they let me do a
(29:35):
three-month stint in betweensemesters.
That was my break.
Instead of going home, becauseI didn't want to go home, I went
and worked for three months inSioux City, iowa, installing in
between semesters.
I have never had hard work inmy entire life at that level.
I dug ditches before I'd doneother things, but until you've
actually stood on ladders andnegative 40 degree temperatures
and tried to install a speaker,why are you haven't tried that
hard?
And I remember these difficulttimes and I'm like man if I have
(29:59):
to put thought down, if I haveto get up and put effort in with
my brain and the keyboard, thenI got it pretty easy.
And when I'm not out in themiddle of the winter and
negative 40 degree temperatureis working with my hands in the
cold, and I think everybodyforgets that there is so much
opportunity out there that theyuse these kinds of excuses to
(30:19):
say they can't.
They play that.
What if game again, right?
What if?
What if?
What if?
Well, you're going to what ifyourself to death and never
actually know cause.
You didn't try.
But things are much harder thanfinding a product to sell on
the internet.
But things are much harder thanfinding a product to sell on
the internet, right?
So literally, it's get down toboat and they get down to mental
roadblocks.
At the end of the day, becauseall the systems, automations, ai
technologies, people willdeliver the products for you.
(30:41):
Oh, my goodness, how rough isthat?
Right?
The systems and technology ofthe internet are all online Now
we all get it.
I think what most peoplestruggle with is like what we
all get it.
I think what most peoplestruggle with is like what's the
process?
Because it can feel a littleoverwhelming.
It can be a lot of analysis,paralysis, that kicks in when
the opportunity is there.
I found mine in physicalproducts.
I was doing digital and it justmade sense to connect the
(31:03):
physical side to it.
So I see it.
When I put money in it, I had aproduct and a lot of people get
caught up in the digitalbecause, well, there's not
really a tacit response, atactile aspect to it.
There is nothing.
Now I can pick up a product andI've got it in my hands.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, and that's why I think truckers are built for
this.
Our listeners out there spendhours on the road.
They understand routes, supplychain and timing, and so they
kind of know a lot of thatbackground criteria by which we
(31:49):
sell is to make sure it'sprofitable.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So we don't sell the product that has a retail price
point lower than $50.
And we need to make sure it hasmore than $12 in net profit per
unit.
Why?
Because of Amazon fees,platform fees, marketing fees,
the cost of the product itself.
You have to stack those on thecost of goods so you know what
your net profit's going to be.
And then you have to do it insuch a way where you can market
and outmaneuver your competition.
(32:11):
Then if other things happen,like you know, trade wars and
nonsense with company countrieslet's just call it that.
I don't want you to get acontent strike if you put this
on YouTube because right nowthey don't like the T word, the
two T words, the air of theirforever's T word and the other
room T word.
They don't like those.
But the fact is it's happeninganyways.
And here's the thing, right,that is just a cost of business.
(32:32):
If your products and businesscan't handle it and you're
operating so razor thin becauseyou're providing low value,
razor thin product margins toyour consumers, there's your
opportunity right.
Level up that brand, chooseproduct that's 50 to 500 in
retail price point, make surethat is a great product, but
make sure that it's in demand.
That's the number one thing wework on make sure it's in demand
(32:52):
and then make sure you create agreat product.
And then just don't marry theproduct.
Create a brand instead.
Brands live on for so long, evenif you're not attached to it.
Dude like, do you smoke?
No, okay, do you if I said theword lucky strikes?
Do you know that brand?
Unfortunately, yes, yeah, okay,marlboro, you're still in smoke
, right?
No, okay, do you understand thepower of branding even though
(33:14):
you're not a consumer of it?
Look at that, right.
Can you tell me all thedifferent variations of the
products of those businesses?
No, right, but you know thebrand?
Yeah, brands live forever andproducts don't.
So we have to remember not tomarry our product, because there
are plenty of girlfriends tosteal, right, and with that, all
products have a life cycle.
(33:35):
So some products might last twoyears or four years or five
years, but brands live forever.
They really do.
As long as the business isaround, brands will live forever
.
So we have to focus on the brandcomponent.
There you go, because there aremore than enough products.
People say, well, it'ssaturated, there's too much
competition.
No one wants these products.
There are millions of productinnovation ideas.
They get to go into thesebrands millions of them.
(33:57):
That's not really the rightthing to say.
It's just an issue you don'tknow about, right To not realize
how many there are.
Everybody is an innovator.
There's only 1% of people whoactually invent right.
99% of product opportunitiesare innovations.
They all are.
So there's plenty ofinnovations out there and all
kinds of products andopportunities.
(34:17):
You just have to know how toget to that traffic.
And that's why I take newpeople who are aspiring
entrepreneurs into Amazon.
First, why 7,000 units a minuteare moving 24 seven.
So when you're when you'rerolling a truck, when you're
sleeping in the cab, when you'reat home, when you're on the
road, when you're doing anything, those products are selling for
you 24 seven.
Right, you're making money whenyou sleep.
(34:38):
That's the ultimate objective,right?
And that system is running allthe time and peak holiday times,
like you know, prime andholidays are running at 9,000
units a minute.
So it's an economic engineestablished already with the
supply chain that moves theproduct for you to the customers
.
It makes money 24 seven.
And there is where the biggestproblem can be solved for people
(34:59):
when it comes to what the heckdo I sell.
You go to the place where 49%of America buys its products
online.
49% of America buys hisproducts on Amazon.
The other 51% are direct andretail or online channels,
websites and other platformsright, or they go to retail.
But 49% it's a huge marketshare.
So I take brand new people towhere the market is right.
(35:21):
It is 10 times greater than theother marketplaces combined,
like Etsy and Wayfair and others, and it is now a model that
distributes on revenue par orjust greater than Walmart Right,
and behind that there's Targetand a couple of other retail
places that Amazon eats theirlunch.
All three of them combineddon't make up Amazon's revenues.
(35:42):
So you go to the place wherepeople want to buy products
sales fixes, everything Rightand then we find a product
that's in demand and we providethat product to them.
We have it manufactured, soit's ours.
We sell it into a business, notour personal account, and we
trade it like a real business.
And we say, hey, do you wantthis product?
And if they go, nah, five salesa day.
Okay, well, what about thisproduct?
Oh, 25 sales a day.
(36:04):
Oh, look, I'm on the target.
Now what am I going to do?
I'm going to hedgehog into thatproduct and say, well, what
about these 10 other variationsof this product?
Do you want one of those?
And I was like, oh yeah, I wantone of those too.
Why?
Because people are brand drivenwhen they start to get
connected, like if I tell youall you know, apple, iphone
people are fanboys and allAndroid people suck Like.
(36:24):
Somebody listening to thisright now is going to get pissed
, right yeah?
Because all of a sudden you'retaking offense, you're hitting
their brand right Like oh man,android people.
Iphone doesn't have the camera.
Android had the camera 10 yearsago and iPhone's just catching
up and you all have a bunch offamilies.
I don't care, it's a phone, itmakes phone calls, right.
But the end is that Apple hasdone a much better job base
because they made it really easyfor people to use and really
(36:46):
easy for them to understand.
So they'll buy the iWatch, theiPhone, the iMac, the iPad, and
then they give one to theirsignificant other or their
spouse and then their kids haveone pretty soon.
They're an Apple fan, you know20 devices deep.
So we do right.
So we do the same thing withour brand.
We do the same thing with ourbrand.
Once we launch onto thatproduct, it says hey, I want
that product from you.
Well, I'm going to give you 10other versions of that product
(37:09):
until you buy more product fromme, right?
Um, and it's kind ofoversimplifying the process, but
that's the game in e-commerceis to just provide.
I think a lot of people getcaught up that there's some
other complexities of course tothat, which is well, how do I
sell on that platform?
But that's a tactical thing andI could teach that to a 19 year
old high school dropout, whichI did, and he makes multi seven
(37:29):
figures a month.
Or I can teach it to my 16 yearold daughter, who also gets it.
So the only there's not alimiting belief by age that
these things can be done.
There's just your limitingbelief that you can do it.
And if you don't try, the fearof failure will be represented
when you give up too easily andsay the whole thing is a failure
because you didn't fight theprocess until you got successful
(37:50):
.
You've probably seen that memeout there with the guy who's
swinging the hammer and he'slike one swing away from the
diamond mine.
Have you seen that one?
That meme out there?
It's like it's right down tothe last moment and he gives up
at the last swing.
I went for my first marketingcampaign in the digital
marketing world.
I was 299 campaigns deep andabout 30,000 in the hole before
the first one took offprofitably.
(38:11):
Campaign number 300 took off.
Imagine if I'd given up at 200.
Yeah, that's rough.
People want to give up tooeasily.
There's such a low hangingfruit of opportunity right now,
with the systems andtechnologies we've had since I
watched the Internet come online, it is easier than ever for
people to make these businesseswork.
They just have to be willing totry to believe.
(38:31):
Like you said, they just got tobelieve, they got to try and
they have to go.
And if they failed some process, if it doesn't work exactly, if
they made a mistake, then youjust fix it.
You fix it and you keep movingforward.
And those are people who becomesuccessful in business and
literally anybody who's willingto get that mindset, adopt that
mindset and retrain themselvesor they're inherently a part of
that mindset already and they'rejust looking for a path.
(38:53):
They will be successful inbusiness and just going to take
some time.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Wow.
So looking ahead, e-commerceworld is fast.
What's coming in the future forAmazon sellers?
What can they prepare for?
I mean, right now, everything'son sale, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Well, it feels like it doesn, it, um?
But here's the thing.
I mean, there's still a hugeamount of inventory moving.
There's a lot of fear andscarcity because people are
paying too much attention to thenews.
But let me remind some people,cause we'll go back in the way
back machine for just a secondback in 2020.
Everybody remember that, causeit wasn't that long ago, but it
feels like a lifetime, right?
We were paying $3,900 for acontainer in December 2019.
(39:29):
By the end of the first quarterDecember 2020, that had risen
to $25,000 per container.
Okay, $3,900 here moved to$25,000 per container.
Do the math on that, right,what they're talking about.
Tariffs just came down from145% down.
It's going to bottom outsomewhere around 30%, which is
nothing compared to what we werepaying in 2020 and 21 and 22
(39:52):
before that all came back down.
But the problem is, everyone wasfocused on the news and
pandemic and all this otherstuff over here and they weren't
focused on the stuff that wewere facing at the traction
level down in the weeds.
And now that no one has any ofthat and all they're doing is
focused on the media and beingall polarized and politicized
and watching too much freakingMSN, they're all like oh, the
products, my products, john, Ican't get my slave labor to make
my products anymore.
(40:13):
What am I going to do?
Like they're freaking out?
Like, come on, people pulltogether.
The end result is that it wasnever more expensive and there
are like 53 ships on their wayinto Los Angeles right now.
So there is no real degradationof product.
You haven't seen it disappearfrom the markets.
It probably won't.
So it's all going to right size.
It's just a big hullabaloowhich is next is going to give
us opportunity to onshore moreproduct creation, maximize our
(40:36):
ability to do economic trade andbartering.
The table right now is set sothat China becomes somebody we
can move all of our productsinto, which we've never been
able to do.
This has always been a one waystreet the European Union,
others are all capitulating aswell very quickly.
So we're going to start sendingproducts into that.
So not only will we have theUnited States, we're about to
have 10 countries open up to usexcuse me where we can make real
money moving products intothose countries.
(40:58):
Never seen that before.
There is a generational wealthmoment occurring right now that
you can see tactically from myvantage point that most people
can't see.
So we're bullish.
We're moving millions ofdollars of product into the
market by the fourth quarter.
We are buying companies thatare product heavy and ready to
go to market.
We got our first letter ofintent on one right now and we
(41:19):
are being bullish and those whoare paying attention coming
along with the ride my internalclient base they're doing the
same thing because that rubberband is pulling back and it's
going to snap, and when it does,we're going to see a
generational change opportunitylike no one has seen in this
country before, and I'm here forit, man.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Let's go.
That's amazing.
I love the opportunity and theway you talk about it, the way
you spread that joy.
I mean that's amazing, it'scontagious.
I think a lot of people need topick up on that, if they can,
versus the negative because,like I said, it's going to slow
them down.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah.
If you think there's no productopportunities, you're not
paying attention.
If you think it's too costlyfor people to buy the average
purchase price on Amazon rightnow is $69.
Okay.
If you think that it has sloweddown economically, it has not.
What's usually happening ismoney shifts.
It's like a river.
It flows as a current, it movesand changes directions and
sometimes it feels closer to youin life and sometimes it feels
farther away, and sometimes inbusiness.
(42:08):
You see it, you have to moveand shake, you have to change
things up and the money justflows like a river, and right
now the river is changing course.
It is starting to go adifferent direction.
For those who are willing totake the risk to get out there
and start a business, maybe evenin the physical product
business world, the slingshotramifications of this are going
to be huge.
One of our clients started abusiness in the middle of that
(42:35):
whole thing in 2020, took himabout nine months longer to get
to market than would normallyoccur, but he stuck it out
because he saw the opportunity.
Five years later, it's a $15million a year business.
He rode that slingshot up thebackside.
When everybody else was tooafraid to go into the market.
He went into the market.
His brand and many of ourbrands have all doubled and
tripled and quadrupled and gonethrough the roof because we were
willing to be bullish, and Isee the exact same happening
right now.
(42:55):
So if you're on the fence abouta product, an opportunity, a
business, if you're thinkingphysical products and maybe
starting your own e-commercecompany, this is your window.
Folks, even Bank of America,forrester Research and the
Department of Commerce havepredicted there's about 21
(43:15):
trillion in assets that arecoming online in the next 10
years.
The swap is happening.
It's happening in real time.
The economic systems, the trade, the cryptocurrencies and
utility currencies to power thatindustry are already coming
online.
There is huge wealth coming forthose who are positioning
themselves, taking some risksnow to see this come in.
And I would just warn everybodyto be cautious, of course, and
to not risk money that'srequired to keep the car
payments going or whatever'snecessary so you can keep things
(43:37):
rolling.
Trust me when I say I know that, but to also not be so afraid
that you don't take advantage ofit.
You're either going to be in itas a consumer, and that may be
your, your choice, but you couldalso potentially be a producer
and have even greater outcome.
If you're willing to dosomething for three to five
years that no one else iswilling to do, then you can live
like nobody else can after thatI love it, man.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
a lot of truckers out there that depended on a
company company drivers and yeah, for something that they could
do, um, you know that could growand create a better future for
themselves, instead of relyingon a company that, like you said
, you don't know when your timeis up.
You mentioned that about IBM.
You feel secure, you're gettingthat paycheck and you're
thinking everything's going tobe okay, doing great.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
All of a sudden, bam number's called Great yeah One
of them is, you know, being avictim and another one's being
empowered.
You know, if you have a chanceto start that thing, get your
mind going, get that thing going, get it rolling.
If something happens to you,you're going to feel empowered
to just double down on whatyou're doing to see the results
faster, versus waiting for thatmoment to occur.
And then it hits you like a tonof bricks and then you go into
(44:42):
panic mode and you start makingbad decisions.
It just happens.
We've all been there.
So I would just caution you bylistening today that if you're
thinking about making the effort, you better get going.
It doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
You don't try.
Like you said, listen to theright people.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Yeah, get some help.
It doesn't hurt to get help.
I'll tell you what.
There's a lot going on and itmakes it hard to make decisions
these days If you don't havesome experience or camaraderie
around you.
You know to, to build thatnetwork in the area you're
focused on and in whateveryou're doing.
If you want to run a sidehustle that you think might be a
business, if you're going tosell a software or do affiliate
marketing or run physicalproducts, whatever you're going
to do, find the company, get inwith whatever they're doing,
(45:21):
listen and learn, because it'swho you know that gets you in
and it's what you know thatkeeps you there.
And if you're willing to put inthe work you get.
The right networking can changeeverything.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Wow, hey, you're saying all the right things, you
know.
I thank you so much.
Uh, everything you said is veryinsightful and also practical
for many people out therelistening, and you know they're
going to hear this and realizethat they've already have they
got the mindset that they justneed to do them, learn the
method.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, yeah, the boat.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, the fricking boat man.
Yeah, the freaking boat man.
It tested out.
Have some faith.
Yeah, those who want to learnmore and grab your book, can you
tell us a little about mostalmost automated income with fba
?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
that's right now on amazon yeah, well, I don't have
an audiobook, so if you have achance to grab one, don't drive
and read, please, uh.
But there's a copy of it onamazon.
If you feel comfortablegrabbing it there, you can go to
my.
There's a link, I believe, in acalled a voltage dm.
If you feel comfortablegrabbing it there, you can go to
my.
There's a link, I believe, in a, called a voltage dmcom forward
slash free book and there's acode, I think, that will be
given out, if I'm not mistaken,for 10, 10 free copies of the
book.
Is that correct?
(46:17):
Yeah, yeah, so we're givingaway 10 free copies.
There'll be a code below youguys.
Go check it out If you want tobe readers or voltage dmcom to
learn more about, about ourstrategies, who we're looking
for as operators and owners totake up that mantle and create a
great business, and then maybeyou get it to the position it
becomes a saleable asset and wehave a conversation about
acquiring it.
That's the upside.
Potential for anybody inbusiness is to build an asset
(46:39):
with the meaning and end, andbuild it from the beginning with
the end in mind, because it isworth more on the end than at
any time during the businessbuilding phase.
Build those assets.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Right there you go, All right.
So, truckers out there, youknow you guys are on the move,
moving freight.
Now it's time to own your brandtoo.
So if you're ready to buildsomething that works while you
roll, this is your sign.
So thanks again, Neil, anduntil next time, keep rolling,
keep growing and keep deliveringmore than just freight.
So
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