Business
All right, well welcome Coulton. Dude, thanks for having me brother. Yeah, no Coulton esteem is actually - if I can give a few seconds background, probably the people who pushed me the most to actually get started on Retailer Secrets, so it's a big honor to have you on as the first guest. Dude, I didn’t know I was the one that pushed you the most, that's pretty good. I guess the past few months we've had the chance to cross paths a few times and increasingly in the last few weeks too. So, I take it as a sign and yeah, such a thrill man to have you on and being able to spend some good quality time with you. Yeah dude, I’m super stoked for this, thanks a ton for having me. Yeah, totally. Actually, when I met you first at the conference, it was back in February I think. One of the thing I messaged you, I was like "dude, I want to hear your story man". [Laughs] That's totally weird huh. I never thought it would actually happen in a podcast interview, so you know, I thought it could be actually great to start with kind of your back story of how you got started in retail or what got you to start there. Kind of like the context of what happened that you decided to go in to retail. Dude I love it and honestly I love your podcast cover too, like the Retail Secrets. I was like "oh, it looks so good". Thank you. So, how did I get started? Honestly, it's kind of a crazy story; I was in college and it was kind of weird being in college because I was a bit more of an entrepreneur and college was more like, follow these rules and guidelines and do this and that and then I just happened to get one class from a teacher who's actually an entrepreneur too. So it was like fate brought together you know? Yeah. And I had been thinking so much on like a business that I had wanted to start. And I mean, this is like my freshman, maybe sophomore year of college, like I’m ready to go you know? Like I’m taking all these classes, I have nothing to do with like business and this was like my first one. That was actually like kind of like business like tied in and related. And it just so happened that this was the teacher's like first class he'd ever taught and he was - he has his own business that he's running on the side, so I think I kind of got lucky with that because he wasn't straight textbook, he was more entrepreneurial. That is rare. Yeah, it's very rare actually. I was pretty lucky to have that happen. And the whole premise of the class was actually to start a business online and I’m like "OK, Wow!" like that's a big step, I know nothing about online business you know? Like I’m just like barely started a business and alone. And he kind of let me slip with actually starting a business more of like locally instead of having to go straight online, but it was - we'd create kind of like a WordPress, very basic site. Was it a choice of yours to actually wanting to do something more local than online based? Yeah, because I had no idea how to do anything online at the point. At that time, online was just so foreign to me. I knew the potential of it and knew these stuff but I didn't understand how far I could go with it. So I’m like, I’m gonna start locally small and then grow it online, that was my goal, right. And so, you know what, I wasn't even planning on sharing this story but I’m walking around campus trying to figure out this business idea and I would think through all these things - I literally was thinking about near my biodiesel at one time. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like you go collect like the fryer grease from like McDonald’s and those place and then you refine it into like diesel. So, I was trying to just think of something, like anything I could do and I was walking around and I pull out my phone from my pocket and it was back then when like iPhone 4 was like the thing you know? Yeah. Like those things are straight glass, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I pull it out my pocket and it literally like fly out of my pocket, just like is soaring through the air. I just like chucked it like this. Your slow motion moment. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how it happened but for some reason like it caught my pocket and just - all I remember is seeing it fly through the air totally just slow-motion and it just smashes dude, just slides across the cement. And it's like icey out too you know, so it slid extra-long and it didn't even like roll, like it literally landed like face down and just slid. And I’m like "there's no way that thing made it" like, "there's no way that it is okay". And I’ve had some pretty lucky drops in the past but - That was not it? No, sure not dude. I pull it up and it is just completely demolished, like just shattered all the way across. And I’m like you know what, I’m kind of a - I like to fix my own things, I like to understand how things work and so when I see an opportunity to like see how it works, I’m all over it dude. So I’m like you know what, "I’m gonna pull this apart and see if I can fix it", why not? And so I bought the screen, I bought like some tools with it, some cheap stuff and it shows up and sure enough dude, like two hours later I’ve got it fixed and it was great. Damn! Somehow like sweet lose you know? And then it was literally that week that I had to have like this business idea 100% down. I’m like, "what if I just start fixing phones for people?" like I can do it, like I did it to my own, I can do it for other people you know? Totally. So that was my business plan, like my business idea and I kind of wrote up the plan a little bit and I ordered some inventory, some stock and I had some screens on hand and my teacher happened to have like a marketing agency that would send out text messages locally as well and he's like "bro, I’ve throw it on there for you" like, "do a deal". And so I came up with this deal, started marketing it through his text messaging thing. He gave me like one free one you know, and sure enough, I got like five customers off the first. Oh, damn, OK. Dude, I was like sweet! And you know what's funny, the first guy I ever fix something for, he was like a lifetime customer. I probably fixed 20 of his thing. Oh yeah, really? He was breaking them all the time, it's kind of funny but - dude, I was so nervous the first time, I’m like pulling apart this phone in front of this guy dude. And he's like watching me do it, I’m like this like [Inaudible] you know. Pulled it apart, and like it took me a while and I got it back together and it was fixed and working for him, he was all excited. So, that's kind of like how I started and then it just kind of took off from there, a little bit a little bit and I worked on it as I went through the semester. But you're asking about like retail; well, that's where I started. Two years - I think it was two years later... A year and a half or two later, I had a buddy of mine come to me and he's like "bro, I want to partner with you and like make this big". OK. I was like "alright dude", because I literally by that time, every night, I had one or two people coming by and I was fixing stuff for them and I literally had my own home office, like all this stuff, all this tech - Boxes everywhere. Yeah, it was bad, like it was his total mancave, like just stuff everywhere. And something like you know what, yeah totally. Like he was an awesome guy, I really respected him and we opened up a shop together and had a - while going to college, had our own like retail store and sure enough, we were fixing phones, we were selling phones, we were selling different things. How did that feel? Dude, it was awesome man! It was amazing! There's no better feeling than walking into your own business like - Yeah, I bet, yeah for sure. Dude, I mean like I built this you know. Yeah and you were younger too right? Yeah. So, it must have felt like you're the man. Exactly yeah. Honestly like I got out of it like four years ago. I think it was like four years ago. Yeah, so I haven't been out of it for too long but yeah. Really cool. That's kind of like how I got started and how I kind of got into it a little bit. And did you have like any desire, kind of hidden desire when you started apart from you know being a school project? Like what do you expect for it to be when you started? Or I guess what's the the drawing you had in your head? Yeah, you know what, that's funny because I think a lot of people will like kind of dabble in something and start it and then do a few things and like, "uh, that's not really working as well" or you know, it's not going as far as I’d like it to be and they give up at that point. And for me I’m like "no, I’m gonna keep at this and I want to make it - I want to make it big enough to where I’m in my own place". And yeah, it took a year and a half ish to get there yeah, but I was going to school full-time at the same time. And when I first started, I was also like doing a part-time job on top of it, so I don't even know how I did it but I did. That's awesome. But like, my idea was, I want to make this something and I don't want to just start one business and then keep starting another one, another one and not get anywhere. I want to actually make it something where I can go with it. And I really enjoyed it, so yeah, that helped a lot too. OK, yeah definitely and I’m assuming that when you started and you know, at that age and you have to - like you got like an actual place, like an actual store where people walked in and like - I’m assuming it's a lot of pressure too and like probably some like doubts, a lot of doubts coming, like kind of struggles with juggling with everything you're doing on the side. How did you deal with that? That's a great question man. It was definitely stressful times, it's definitely hard. Even in the beginning when I’m putting so much time into it and my wife's kind of wondering if it's gonna go anywhere farther and I’m like totally like it's gonna make it huge and I really don't know. But like, it definitely can be more of a stress than you can let it be. How do I rephrase that better? You can focus on the negative parts of it and we would address about it or you can plan out what you need to be getting done, what you need to have on hand for cash and kind of plan around it and we go around a lot of those stresses that you're gonna bring upon yourself if you don't. And so, honestly like the way I got around it is we knew what we needed, we knew what we could spend and we knew what we needed to put into marketing different things to go bigger. And so, that helped a lot but still, there was plenty of times where it's stressful but I loved the heck out of it doing it, you know, like it was just so fun that it almost took away a lot of that stress. Yeah, for sure. So it seems like you had a game plan already. Like you had an idea how it would work, you knew where you wanted to take it. Like how far the reality was from that game plan though? Oh dude [Laughter], you know what's funny, us entrepreneurs, a lot of times we'll kind of think of something like "I can accomplish this in this amount of time". I feel like every time I say that, it's never ever anywhere close to that. And you know, actually I was listening to Grant Cardone the other day, and he's like "guys, you need to like 10x that time a lot of the times". Like you need to pull the plan for being able to like stay in business for 10 times longer than what you think, you're gonna be getting return on investment. Totally. And I totally believe it. Like it took us a lot longer to be revenue positive, like that good revenue positive after paying for the store, paying for the parts, paying for wages and salaries, that kind of stuff. It took us a while longer than we expected but we planned it out pretty well and we had to skim at first for a while. So, just make sure that you're not planning on - or like whatever time you think it's gonna take - 10x that. Make sure you have a little bit of leeway on top of that. It's gonna help a ton and, that'll reduce the stress a lot for sure. And I think like everybody can relate so much to that because - and business owners and entrepreneurs in general, like we want things to happen so fast, it is so frustrating to see I guess at the beginning how things actually take so much time, right? Yeah. And the little activities need to happen again and again and then again before it actually starts to form into something that you can see grow, right? Yeah. And one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make too is they expect everybody else on their team to be just like them. To be like married to it as they are and it's just not gonna happen, like that's not the way the world works you know? Yeah. Yeah, you can you can do some different stuff there. Was that one of the real first challenge that you faced? You know what, funny enough, I didn't quite expect - I feel like I had seen it enough in other people, I knew that it wasn't quite like - it was more of a dream than reality for a lot of entrepreneurs to like hire somebody that's just gonna be awesome and amazing. And if you like - like my business partner was awesome, the guy that we had working for us, just like younger kid in college as well, he was awesome like we got lucky with him. But honestly, they're not gonna know nearly as much as you. They're not gonna be as invested and I understood that before then and so I think it helped a ton knowing that, hey, he's gonna be good but - or like he may be really good but honestly, you got to account for him not knowing nearly as much as you do. Sure, yeah. I think definitely partnerships are hard but the expectations you have in people is actually - it is pretty insane I think for everybody. How do you adjust though? Like from this. How do you adjust from like expectations of those around you? Yeah, as a starter I guess. When you just start and you're I guess disappointed or just raging because it doesn't - people are not putting in the same amount of work as you do right? Yeah, you know what's funny is um, I’ve always been a little bit more of a laid-back kind of chill guy and so I’ve - so that like for me, I knew not to go in with too many expectations. But you are gonna have those times where it's like "come on people", like "you seriously didn't catch this?" you know, like that's easy and it is easy to you. But like communication is huge. Other times it's a lack of the communications. A lot of times it's your own fault that that happened because you didn't put the time into training, you were too busy doing what you thought only you can do. I see that a lot of time with entrepreneurs like "oh, I’m like the best at this, nobody else can do like I can". Actually like yeah. Actually a lot of people can. Yeah, people can take things off your plate that you didn't think they could but [Inaudible] that way. And honestly like the biggest thing that I saw too was showing - in a way like showing the gratitude for what they're doing. Because a lot of times, I’ve seen it happen so many times with entrepreneurs, like they're always upset with everybody that they work with because nobody's doing what they wanted them to do or is working as hard as they wanted them to and so they're just mad about it. Well like, first off when you understand like their expectations, it's different but when you work with them, you communicate and you're like being grateful for what they are doing, it changes the whole scene. Now they don't see you as a dictator, they see you as like somebody they can actually work with. And then a lot of times they're happier, which means they get more done too. But too many entrepreneurs are just stressed out of their minds stressing about everything else that's going on instead of thinking about what's actually going good for them. Yeah, that's a great point. And just for context, at this point, so you were in business for four years, about four years you said? I stopped about four years - I think it was four years ago. It's like three or four years ago. I had been in business at about a year and a half before we got the store and then we had it for about a year after that before I sold it. So, the ending is you sold it though. OK, well let's not spoil it though, we will be getting there. But you know what I’m curious about... And this is a very selfish interview by the way, like I’m really trying to just get in your head and trying to figure out exactly like what happened, how it felt and all of this. And all the questions I ask is just... I’m really trying to put some traits around the person, right? Yeah. And I’m sure around the experience as well like, when you got the store, I’m assuming it's when things picked up a bit or the good stuff which is that stuff right? Like are there any challenges that you faced that you actually didn't expect at all that would ever be a thing? You know um, plenty actually. Oh, I thought. I thought that it would be easier to stock the retail place, well, buy inventory in the first place and holy cow, it was a huge investment upfront just for the inventory that we did get and then the management system, trying to manage what you've sold and how to like reorder, I thought that would be a lot easier, keeping track of everything and then also like the stock that I had in the back, like the parts, I will tell you, I learned a ton about what not to do. [Inaudible] too. Yeah, like there's a ton of small parts, we had way too many of some stuff and then not enough of other things and one thing that I did that I - oh, I really wish I would not have done this but I did it because I thought it was smart at the time; every time we'd get like a new phone like screen or you know, like a new phone would come in that had parts that we didn't have on hand, I would order two of them. So I would price it so that I could buy two parts and my money on the sale. So like, I wanted to make a little bit of money and be able to pay for two parts. So that means, after I would fix the phone, I’d make a little bit of money and I’d have an extra part still in hand. Smart right? Totally. Now [Laughter] dude, I had so many stupid parts in there that I didn't use for months dude, and they were just lying on the shelf and like just depreciating in value, just going down and going down and going down. And then you don't want to turn around and resell it because that takes a lot of time to like get all the pictures, like you know, type out the listings, put them on like eBay or wherever it's at and then try to resell. And then you got to ship it out, like that's just annoying. And so, I had all of these parts that were just like garbage essentially at the end. And what I didn't realize was most people were okay with waiting in a few days for the part come in. Like "hey, you have a specialty phone, we don't have the part in here, I will order it right now, let's get you to pay for it and then it'll be here in a few days, I’ll give you a call". Right. Holy cow! When we started like - you know what's funny, the - I probably shouldn't go too far but the guy I sold it to, I ended up - we like kind of sold it to and I like transitioned into working for him, to like become a general manager and like [Inaudible] and like help him open up more. So it's kind of - yeah, it's interesting but I learned a lot from that too, that was definitely a learning experience. But like his system, when I saw it, I was like "bro, this is way better than the system I had". Like, they didn't buy any extra stupid parts, they knew like "okay, keep this mini [sp] on hand of this this this this and this" and I’m like - just like "oh, maybe I need yeah, to -". Well, back when I was running on myself, you know I’m like, "oh, maybe I should just buy a few more because that's probably what I need to have on hand", but when I sold out, it was like "wow, this is so much more simplified, so much better", and the profits were way higher because of it. For sure yeah. And it makes total sense that I guess, looking backwards you think or you need to look at what the sales actually or what people in majority need and that's what you need to invest more in and the rest is like, "I’m sure they can wait a bit". Yeah, exactly. But I was just trying to stock up so I could have stuff in stock for them and then just that I am - How did you deal with like splitting budget? Did you find like finding customer was an easy thing for you or like did you invest a lot for acquiring customers? Well, I mean, initially I put some money into ads and it was more of like that local marketing using those text messages. I think I did some Google Ad words and I was like "this is dumb, I’m just wasting money", which is kind of - for local businesses a lot of times it is you know? Yeah, for sure. And then what's funny is that it grew pretty fast actually by word-of-mouth. But not just that, like I had a strategy for getting more word-of-mouth, like - Okay, viral. In a way yes, so we would do competitions. We would actually - they have people post like their pictures of their broken phone and see like who had the worst phone and then like get as many people as you can to like it and the one with the most likes wins. And so we'd have people just flooding into our Facebook group, going crazy, dropping all these things because they want a free fix. We told them the winner gets a free phone repair. That is brilliant. And you know what's funny it's like we had a Facebook group and I think I have like a hundred people in there and we did one competition and at the end of it, we had like 800 people on it. Like it was just damn! Like instantly you know. How to get all the students in one spot, right? Yeah, exactly. And then like it spread too and then people were like "bro, check out this phone, like it's totally demolished", you know, and so like it was fun to see. So that was like one thing that we would do. We'd pay in the parts but honestly it was like, it was really cheap because - I mean, granted we lost out on a sale but who knows if they would have actually came in and got it repaired themselves. But then other people that had broken phones knew where to go now, so that's cool but then - so that was one of our kind of strategies that we'd do. And then another one that I do that was my favorite was - I was kind of a little bit of like the monopoly in town. First off because people like - I knew a lot of like kind of the bigwigs in the town because I had worked around it pretty good and so I had become friends with a lot of them. And it's like new people would come in, they'd be like "don't go to that guy, this is your dude, this is the guy you need to go to". So, I kind of had that reputation as well which was cool, but the most favorite thing I do, that really worked very well is I would literally walk into Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, all of like the cell phone places, all the cell phone stores that - like the computer place, whatever it maybe, that were around me, I’d walk in with like a 12-pack of Mountain Dew, a 12-pack of dr. Pepper and like another 12-pack of coke you know and I’d be like "well yo, what's up guys! Hey, I got some like - I just thought I’d come over introduce myself, I got some pop for you guys, I ordered some pizza, like hopefully you guys didn't eat yet, like I got some pizza for you guys for lunch. Just wanted to come and introduce myself and give you guys some snacks since there's some pop and some Pizza and stuff and if you guys ever got anybody that's got a broken phone you wanna - if you need somewhere to send them, like I’d love to help out, so I’m just kind of here for you but here's some pop, here's all this" and like I’d be friends with all these guys. That is smart, yeah. And then, they're like "holy cow, this dude is bringing us like pop, soda, like pizza like -" and I did parties too. Like I’d bring them all in and like - yeah just you know, whatever. And pretty soon, like that one move, I had every store in town referring to me and like me only and they loved me because I gave them like what they wanted. You know, it's cheap bro. Like some pizza and pop, I’d spend like 30 bucks maybe you know. Yeah. And then now all of them are sending all their traffic over to me. And dude, that actually blew us up pretty quick which is pretty sweet. Yeah, I guess you figured out quickly where to go to get the biggest return on investment right? Exactly, yes. Because, I mean, this compared to bidding on keywords one by one click, I mean, that is definitely something. There's no personality in keywords man. Like there's no personality. And you're a local business. Yeah. Now, online it's different and I still don't believe in Adwords I’m gonna say for online stuff but you have to have the publishing part and attractive character part for what you're doing and that's the key. And that's actually a great point. In the new world of entrepreneurship online, we talk a lot about those things, but it's actually true for offline too. I mean, you are the attractive character online or offline, in real life like we actually don't think about this but you are. It's true. And a lot of online strategies like the Dream 100 that I was doing for these stores around me, a lot of those online strategy you can use as well for - And Dream 100 is, to give a bit of context, it's definitely something we actually will touch on a lot in this podcast. But essentially it's playing around with influencers in your space. And if you're a local business, it's got to be the other businesses around you. It's got to be the people who knows your customer, they don't necessarily are competitors. It can be a lot of different types, schools - I mean, we'll talk a lot more about this. This is really powerful stuff. Huge, huge. That made my business, yeah. Yeah, that's what fueled your business and that's what I guess allowed you to make mistakes with ordering too many parts. Yeah exactly. I tracked that, I’d ask people "how did you hear about us?" and a lot of times it was "oh, it's down at the Verizon store and they were like; you gotta go to this dude. It's a modern firm, it's the best", so yeah. That's actually so interesting and I’m thinking of a lot of questions that are actually are a little bit of ahead of this thing. So, I’m sure we'll come back a bit to this because this is so interesting. But one other thing I think - every time I talk to business owners, at one point in the conversation, they tell me about something that drives them nuts. And I find it just hilarious because - in fact, when you deal with people a lot, you've got to be like droven nuts so many times and I wonder what it was for you or for your partners. Something that drove you nuts. You know what's funny is um, there's just always something specific in each industry that people do repeatedly that's like "why? How do you not get this?". You know what's funny for me, like it kind of drove me nuts but I also like laughed at it at the same time, I don't know how many people would come in and literally be like "I don't know what's wrong on my phone, it just died. Like it's dead. Like it won't do anything." and I’m like "oh, that's really interesting, let me look at it." and I would literally like plug it in and turn on, like literally. People would come in or I do a hard reset which is literally like - most people know how to do that, you just hold down like the home button and the top button and that resets it. And I would do that like multiple times a day almost. Like it was sad how many times I would have to do that. Like people who come in and then for like a lot of the Android phones, like it just died. I’d pull the battery out and put it back in and turn it on like all the time. And so like people come in you're like "great, another customer!". Nope, they just don’t know how to use their phone. Yeah and you know what's funny is that it's totally the friendly neighbor type of thing to do you know? Oh yeah. Because for many people, I mean business is built the community we live in right? Through our neighbors and you've got to play that game too, right? Yeah. It's part of building a nice place we all live in. Yap. And you know what's funny is some people will try to capitalize on that. And they'll be like "oh yes, what's wrong with your phone?" or whatever, like "let me go look at it. Oh, that's like 50 bucks", for like me having to [Inaudible] or whatever. And sometimes like I’d clean out the port, like the charging port because they have lint in there and they didn't realize that it wasn't going all the way. That happened a lot and so I could clean it out and I’d plug it in and they're like "oh, you fixed it!" like "holy cow!". And they'd ask me like how much do I owe you and I’m like "oh no, don't worry about it", like I didn't do anything. You know like "don't worry about it" like "you're good to go. If you need anything else let me know". I don't know how many times people would be like "yo, someone told me like you know how to take care of stuff really well and like they loved it when they came in and you helped them out, so like I needed to come over this place and like see you". So it definitely pays back I feel like. For me it did a lot because people knew that I wasn't there to just sell them or make money off of them. Like I didn't see them as a dollar sign, I saw him as an actual person that I wanted to help, so yeah. Yeah. No, totally yeah. Do you feel like - after these three years I guess of business, do you feel like you achieved what you wanted when you got started? Yeah actually. I have achieved - well, since then, I’ve achieved more than I - when I first started, I was kind of limited on what I could see because I didn't understand the whole lot of the online world, I didn't understand a whole lot of that. I guess I wouldn't say I’ve achieved what I was dreaming about totally, but I’ve accomplished - I feel like a more than I was even expecting to you in a way. It's a fun road, I really enjoyed it. That's awesome. I honestly didn't think I’d have an actual store within a year and a half. I thought I’d take longer than that, so yeah. And I loved about what Steve Jobs says when he says that "you can only connect the dot backwards" and I’m sure - and it's some of the questions I totally want to ask. It's about like, now that you connect the dots, you know what I mean, like you've been through it once and I’m sure you have a ton of things that pops in your mind when you talk about those stories you're thinking like "oh dude, I could have done this or I should have done like this right from the beginning". Those are some questions I want to get to but first, I want to understand, why did you stop or why did you get out of retail, what happened? You know what's funny is um, I started listening to this dude named Russell Brunson and it was my dream to go online. And what's funny is I actually sold the company in hopes of starting it online, like business part. So, what's funny is, I don't know if you actually even know this but I had met Steven Larson just like months before I was going through like the sell and transitioning over to working with him. Oh yeah. Just a few months before that even happened, and what's funny is like, we were talking one day, we would talk a lot just on marketing stuff, I’m like "this guy actually gets it, I love it". And one day I was like "bro, do this guy named Russell Brunson?" and he was like "dude, you know who Russell Brunson is?" like "yeah I know who Russell Brunson is". And he's like "nobody knows who Russell Brunson is". This was before ClickFunnels you know. Yeah. So, nobody really - like yeah, he had a following but nobody around me knew who he was in college. It just wasn't a thing then. And so, we had gotten - like we were talking and I really wanted to start a smartphone insurance, like an online website for that and I had been talking to him and he's like - it's funny, we were sitting down in his living room one day and we're talking and I know Steve like... And in college, there's so many opportunities and so many things and so many people trying to get you to like selling you on doing something with them you know? For sure. And I was like "bro, you have like a talent for online stuff that I don't have yet" like I’m working on it you know. And I was like "let me tell you about this business". Yeah, it's not like - it's funny, a lot of people think they're just gonna - like people will steal your business idea, you know, like - I know right, yeah. A lot of times you're the expert that they would need in order to accomplish it, to pull it off. It doesn't happen like that, you know. And so I’m like, "let me tell you about this idea that I have"... And so I kind of ran him through it and I was telling him about like how I wanted to partner with repair stores across the U.S. but have it all online and it would just work online, I would never have any stock, I wouldn't have anything, it would all be taken care of locally. And so, he was like "bro, this is awesome". And yeah, so we actually started that. That was like our first funnel ever. Like Steve's first funnel ever, just like ClickFunnels itself. That is awesome. Yes. That was my hopes, was to blow that up, make it huge, we like broke even and that's cool. We just like shut it down yeah. Well and it makes total sense when you think about like a repair store, I was thinking like a lot of the challenges I guess in retail is like having recurring customers and putting somebody on a continuity program, like insurance for phone repair, like this is pretty freaking cool. It is, yeah, great idea, I loved it. But yeah, I’m happy you mentioned Russell Brunson actually. In the second episode of this podcast, I mention Russell Brunson and the thing he talks about which is " Amateurs focus on the front end and professionals focus on the back end", right? Yeah. And he tells the story of the group on citysmart.com and the vacuum cleaner guy who had this ad on CitySmart and who complained about it working pootie because he didn't make any money. Yeah, I don’t remember this one that much. And it's such an amazing story because it's basically telling about how a lot in business, we think everything we do to acquire customers is the final result, but really the dude probably had to 150 leads from there. Russell Brunson and his wife was one of the leads - Oh wow! And he hired him like seven times after that. And the guy was complaining about how it was a waste of time and money to do that ad. But really, what was fueling his business was literally all the backend of all those people who came in right? Through that offer. And I have a feeling in brick-and-mortar businesses, it's huge right? And we always see like the holiday sales and those stuff and - they're made to bring people in but if you think about repair stores, one of the following problems people gonna have is, it's gonna happen again. And it can be as small as my little like charger thing is broken and you just need to clean it, right? Yeah. And I’m just bringing this up because, first I like to bridge the fact that you've brought in Russell Brunson and Steve Larsen and that's awesome, I love it and I think it brings a lot to think about when you have a local business and you can actually do stuff but they're solving some problems that people have when they come in in the first place right? But you can go further than just why they came in for. Oh yeah. And it's definitely really cool that that was your second business then. Yeah, that's true, oh man. I wish it would have gone - well, we didn't know quite nearly as much as we do now back then but yeah, wish it would have gone a little better than it did but - Yeah. No, for sure. And so um, this is really where the fun is for me, I’m really curious about this part because I know that - we know that you got out of the business but I’m very curious to see if you were to start again, what are some of the things you know you would do differently right away? Ooh, interesting. If I were to restart the repair business? Yes. Not necessarily like a business but the repair business? Yeah or a local business. OK local yes. I actually would have built a lot more hype than I did. So if you follow Jeff Walker, he has a book called "Launch". If you follow him, if you read that book, it helps you understand how businesses do their Grand Openings the right way. Like it's more online but it totally applies for local as well. I wish I would have put way more emphasis and gone around and done the Dream 100 part with all those people a lot earlier than I did. And start a Fire Festival. [Laughter] Not that much. I would make sure that I had things lined up. Oh, that's funny dude. Yeah that was pretty sad. Anyway, so yeah, I totally would have built that more of like the launch of the business, like the opening of it. That way when it comes in, I would have had a more of a solid foundation for like just customers in general coming in and knowing about me. I would have done a lot more ads, different things locally as well to kind of push it. But then, also I wish I would have researched a little bit more about like how inventory, like kind of like figure it out right. Like how to not only manage it but like - Leverage it. Yeah, leverage it and know like - I wish I would have looked at other people's businesses that applied to mine more, so I’d have better ideas, better like kind of direction and know where I’m going. It's so funny like, you're saying Steve Jobs says you can always connect the dots backwards but you can't really connect them forward because you don't know where the heck you're going. Of course yeah. Well if you think about it, like I always - so there's a saying on the internet marketing world with like Russell and Steve, "get a coach, be a coach". Like you want to get a coach and part of like looking at those other people's businesses where they are at, it's almost like getting a coach and kind of seeing the dots that got them to where they're at. And if you can get a coach that's ahead of you, farther ahead of you, they can look backwards on those dots. That's right, yeah. You can look forward to where they're at so easily and so if you get their direction, they can say "hey, I’ve been at that same point that you're at, I can help you connect the dots to get to where I’m at". Totally. Instead of just me shooting from the hip trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing you know. I had kind of an idea of what to stock because I’d been doing it and I only really stock like the iphone parts before I started like the actual brick and mortar and I thought it was smart to stock more and that was a total just dumb idea really to do that. So, if I would have seen that, it would have helped me revenue a ton more and to be able to put more into, not inventory but more into marketing, more into growing the business. I was putting more into marketing or more into inventory than I was marketing and that's a huge mistake. So, I would have done a lot more marketing. I would have done a lot more because a lot of times, we have this like limiting - like mind - like belief that there's only so many customers out there, when in reality, there's way more than you even realize. And so much applicable for when you're local. Oh yeah, totally. They think "oh, I’m local, like it's small, like there's not a whole lot of people out there". There's a lot more than you think there are and if you can be that attractive character, like market the right way instead of just "hey, come buy it from me", like so much better. Yeah. I totally need to put some resources, links for this interview because, I mean, you mentioned Jeff Walker and you're "Attractive Character" and all those stuff are just actually so relevant to building a business rather online or offline and it's big. And I’m sure you've talked about Expert Secrets as part of like Active Character, that's - Totally, Expert Secrets - dotcom Secrets is actually very interesting when you think about it because, it's supposedly the underground playbook for a business online but really, it is much more applicable also offline than we think. I literally read that like right after I had sold the business which makes me mad but - that's right when it came out, I wish I had read it way before that. Yeah. This is probably the one book that I had epiphany after epiphany after epiphany. It's just straight gold bro. Crazy. Both of them. Yeah. Rethink the whole business game um, super super interesting. I have a bunch of little questions, little rapid-fire question I’d love to ask you and yeah totally. So, one thing I guess could be... What is the piece of advice you have given the most or would give and why to business owners? To business owners? Entrepreneurs, yeah. Man, I feel like I’ve given so many different ones. Thinking on the context of this interview though, honestly kind of what I just said a little bit earlier is find those who are successful and model them. Don't try to reinvent the wheel, find somebody who's been on the path that you want to go on. I guess that's actually pretty much what I preach on like my podcast. I try to give people information on there about experts in certain areas of business so that they know who to go to and I think that’s key because like I said, the coach. Like they know, they've seen the path. You have no idea, you're just one foot at a time trying to get there and so, I’d totally say find somebody who's super successful in it, figure out why and try to model it. Totally and that's pretty much what happened when you got - I guess when you sold the business in; you had somebody who came in with more experience and showed you ways to do that, you didn't think about right? Yeah exactly. I had no idea then when I saw it was like "what the heck have I been doing?" like, "you know how much better this would have been?" like "oh man!". You could have sold this business for twice more. I know, right? Like I honestly did not make like very much at all on that sell and it was a very big learning experience, so I’ll just say that. That's awesome. Learn from your experiences, that's what I would say. Yeah, for sure. Any bad recommendations you had in your profession or industry? Ooh! Any bad - you know what's funny to me um, I’ll tell this in a little bit of story. So, as I was in college, I actually was literally going to school in business, my degree was in business management and my emphasis was in entrepreneurship. So I was literally going to be an entrepreneur. Which is kind of funny because college isn’t really like entrepreneurial focused... I don't know. I learned a lot, I didn't learn like a ton of the marketing skills that are out there now. But what's funny is people would ask me, they'd be like "hey, what's your name?" "I’m Colton", whatever or like "where're you from?", you know, all those questions, and then they'd be like "well, what's your degree? What are you going into?" and I’d be like "Oh, business management." and they're like "oh yeah, like what's your emphasis?", "well, entrepreneurship". And dude, I don't know how many times they would look at me and be like "entrepreneurship? Like really?" and I’d kind of get that like look like "oh man, I’m so sorry for you right now". Kind of like the pity look, like "oh, you got to entrepreneurship, like that's kind of suck" you know. And they would literally like - they would - no joke, they would say this to my face. They'd be like "oh, don't they're like 90% of businesses fail?" and I’m like "you're seriously telling me this right now? Like you don’t think I know that", like huh, you know? And honestly if you look at the numbers, 90% of them are like some mom and dad that just started a business for their house or whatever like - and then they shut it down. So there's a ton of the little startups that people are dreaming and then don't really work at it. But at first it like bugged me, you know. I’m like "holy cow! They're right. Like 90% of businesses fail. Like what am I doing? Like I only got a 10% chance and then like a 1% that ever make it past like the million". And so like that got to me at first and then, I remember one day I was thinking about it, I was like "wait a second, I would way rather be at the top and know when the business is gonna fail". But then, literally what I would say back to people and I loved it, I loved saying this, I don't know why like I just - because man, nobody ever thinks about like the next thing. They always think "oh well, based on what I known and the statistic, 90% of businesses fail", right. They never think about like what that means for them, they just know they want to give you the advice. And so, I would literally look at them and be like "oh, don't you know you're gonna be working for one of those 90%?". Like dude, like do you not - like what do you - you will work for a business. If you get a job, it's a business and if you say 90% of them fail, that's no different for me and you, like it's no different. [Crosstalk] chance you lose your job. Yeah, and like, I would way rather be at the top because it's a pyramid, I would way rather be at the top and know when it's going down and have the choice to change it and try to get it from not failing or knowing when to get out, you know what I mean? Dude, this is awesome. And like [Crosstalk] on top of it, so yeah. This is awesome. So a bad recommendation you got was, don't do it? Yeah, a lot of people are like "no, like you can't do that, like businesses fail" and I’m like "obviously not all of them" like people have - there have to be entrepreneurs for there to be businesses in the world. I mean, we wouldn't have any businesses if people were too scared to even start one. But there's gonna be so many people that are just gonna say "oh well, I know based on these numbers or my cousin who has no idea what he's doing in the business, I know that it doesn't work, so you should -". So, don't listen to people. If they haven't done it or if they're not making a ton of money and they're very respected, I would not listen to them because you can get the poor mentality a lot. Yeah, totally agreed. And I mean, I couldn't agree more. I mean, this podcast is really about talking to the people who do their work and not the rest and there is a lot of content out there. Oh yeah, there's a ton and you're gonna get told a lot of stuff that - yeah. Find somebody who's actually doing it yeah, making it. For sure. I know, I find myself a lot of time in situations when I get super overwhelmed and when I get overwhelmed and unfocused, I get nothing done and that makes me really sad. What's some of the thing you do when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost focus? Like what do you do to get it back or I get reset? So, there's a few hacks that I have. It still happens, there's still days when I can't like get past it, yeah totally. Everybody's gonna have those days, you're human. There's a few hacks though; we listen to a ton of music because music - you know what's funny, I just wrote this quote down actually "all learning is state dependent" and I think all work is also state dependent. Even just slouching back in your chair and like kind of uh... You're naturally like kind of have - it's almost like the endorphins are released for like - not endorphins but like the chemicals are released for - like I need to get tired because I’m like slouching but when you've got high energy music going on, a lot of time we listen to higher beat music that keeps us going. A lot of it is what you eat as well; if you're eating some crappy stuff during the day... I feel like crap after I eat a pizza, you know like - it's natural. But one thing that me and Steve do every day that's kind of interesting is every morning we drink ketones, so there's like keto supplements out there. So we literally every morning drink ketones and we try not to eat until like noonish and then we have more of like a balanced meal because I don't know how many times - back in the day when I was in like high school, like "oh, I’m gonna go grab a pizza for lunch" you know, like eat the whole thing, I’m OK, and then I’m like just dragging afterwards, like dying because my insulin is getting pumped out like crazy and like my whole body's shutting down because my stomach needs all the blood flow. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. That's like one of the biggest like hacks we do is making sure that you're not putting yourself in the situations that's gonna cause the energy drop. Yeah, totally. Prevent instead of repair, right? Exactly man, that's true, so yeah, totally. It makes sense. What's the thing you love to go buy from the store directly? What's the one thing you like to go buy from the store? You know, I’m not as long as big, but what do you still go do and you love, you know, that thing is your thing, you love to buy it there. Oh that's interesting, that's a good question. This is kind of bad, I had to like stop this for a while but literally like I love switching it up and changing, like mundane everything's the same kind of day it is, driving me nuts, so I love to switch it up every now and then and it feel like really diving and we can't get it to stay back up. I’ll head to the convenience store or whatever and just like get out and get some Sun or whatever it maybe. Hopefully my total crush, like my kryptonite is really like I pick up like an energy drink a lot of the times. Dude, that's awesome. You know a lot of times, I don't feel like caffeine actually affects me that much. I do drink a little bit of it, so maybe that's why it doesn't affect me because I drink a lot it anyway, but I just - for some reason, that's my - and don't get sugared ones, this is sugar free, 100% like you know. Right, yeah. I just will go pick up something to drink, that's not super bad for you even though it would save energies for you which I totally - actually I agree in a way. No, but I get it. That was the best I found. Yeah, that's awesome. What's Coulton up to? What I’m I up too? Yeah. Dude, a lot of things right now. So, as I kind of mentioned earlier, me and Stephen Larsen worked together, we did this stuff. It is funny that we met in college, split up and then came back together. Yeah, so right now honestly like I do a lot of the operations part for Stephen on his side of business. I run a lot of the - we have a whole nother side that teaches MLM [Inaudible] actually do it without bugging their friends and family, how to actually market. I manage like all of that, the group, like I do the lives in there, I do all that stuff. And then honestly, other than that, like I have my own podcast that I keep doing. I’m trying to start a second one which I don't even know I’m gonna have the time for it but I’m doing it. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, look, because you guys pushed me to start so much, I’ll say you should start it too, the second one. Yeah. I’ve already got a bunch of the content, like recording and getting it together, so I’m excited about it. That is great, yeah. OK, so the next big thing is the podcast coming up soon? Yeah. Cool. And what is the impact that you would love to have in this world or in your neighborhood? That's actually funny because I’ve been trying to get clear and clear on that and I think one of the biggest - one of the things that drives me, that I would love to have an impact on is literally helping - not helping but showing the beginners, a lot of the people who are getting started online, that they're really the person that's in the way and helping them understand - it's hard to say this because I don't want to get into mindset stuff too much but like, you dictate how you're gonna end up going. Like you're - what you believe you can accomplish has a lot to do with what you actually accomplish. And so, if I can help people get past their own crap and like understand how much they can actually do and actually accomplish, that would mean a ton to me, to help people go farther than they think they can. Totally. And that's something you already do, so that's great that you get to do it more and more and I’m sure you'll be able to help a ton more people. Dude, I hope so, I hope so yeah. What's a good place people can find more about you? You can find me on Instagram and my name's super weird, not super weird but it spelled different so it's Coulton, it's C-O-U-L-T-O-N. A lot of people drop the "U" and in fact, a lot of times they even spell it without the "U" because people like you don’t want to have the conversation every time I say my name. So you can find me on Instagram, it's Coulton.woods, my podcast is "Learning From the Experts, find me on Facebook", wherever you know, like I’m pretty available on a lot of the social platforms there. Awesome. And I’ll definitely drop some links and the transcripts, the blog post for this episode so that people can actually find the stuff without the "U" and yeah, totally. Yeah, don’t forget the "U". Don’t forget the "U". Thanks so much man for showing up on this interview, it was a blast and I’m happy I finally got to hear the story of Coulton. You didn't know I was in retail at all, did ya? I didn’t know. Uhh, it's funny. It's all good dude, no worries. I’m glad we got to meet up a little more and yeah.