Resources:

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

Transcript:

Kathi Burns  0:04  
Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening then thanks for coming.  The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at ThePodcast@OrganizedandEnergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi, everyone, I'm back and I am with Norman Farrar. He is a serial entrepreneur who provides online marketing and manage e commerce solutions for brands. He's worked with several Fortune 500 companies including Mercedes Benz, Coca Cola, 20th Century Fox. Since the 90s, Norm focus on helping entrepreneurs or optimize their business potential. Got that together kind of a little bit. Hi, norm. How you doing?

Norm Farrar  1:13  
Good. How are you?

Kathi Burns  1:15  
I'm doing fantastic. Fantastic. It's so happy to have you on the show. We go back many, many years. I know people really wanted to find out like what's behind this beard guy. What's he up to?  Well, yeah, dog in the snow.

Norm Farrar  1:33  
Yeah. He's gonna be let out. There he is. I believe he's gone. Yeah, yeah. So what's behind the beard guy? Probably beard. And more beard. You know what? It this has been a crazy crazy ride since the 90s. Like if I go back to what it was like to run a business back in the 90s.  I remember I was working with Mercedes Benz. This is a I was a contractor doing some film for them. I got kicked off a movie set because I was not wearing a suit. I was a grip, or no, I was a camera system then. Because I was not wearing a suit. That's that's how I used to do a lot of promotions with this large telco. And huge promotion all over the the US and Canada. And the VP of sales, who I knew very well came in, I walked over, I thought I was being very, very risky. Coming in with a suit jacket and the black mockneck turtleneck. Right? I was told he he waved me over and he said, Norm, what are you doing? And I said, what? He goes, where's your suit and tie? I had a suit jacket on. He said don't ever come in here again, I'll make sure that your next contract will never be seen.

Kathi Burns  3:04  
Wow. And this was in the 90s?

Norm Farrar  3:06  
This was in the this was in the 90s? Yep.

Kathi Burns  3:10  
Wow. And now we have California casual throughout the whole world.

Norm Farrar  3:15  
Absolutely. And pajama pants.

Kathi Burns  3:19  
Lots of lots of pajama pants, that's so funny. So before you became a serial entrepreneur, or were you at that point, you were your own company where you were doing video?

Norm Farrar  3:32  
Yeah, so this goes right back right into high school. We're always dabbling in something. So from a rock promotion to which Yeah, never got off the ground. But our, I say our we were a group of four. We tried to do a rock promotion company, and never did anything. But it gave us some experience incorporating a company in your teens and this moving forward. In college, trying to pay are like trying to pay my way through a video company that opened up with a friend. And then just always, for my, I pretty much always worked for myself, except for a very short period of time when I went back to work with my dad, and who is a serial crazy serial entrepreneur. And also I went into the military, I was in the reserve for in Canada for a year or so. So anyways, other than that, I've always worked for myself.

Kathi Burns  4:29  
Awesome. So now, your company focus on helping other entrepreneurs. Tell us specifically what you do for people at this part in your life.

Norm Farrar  4:40  
Oh, this is gonna drive some people crazy with this. There's no short Reader's Digest. Something I've learned a long time ago back to the 90s again, back to that telecommunications company, like we were servicing all these companies. But I learned about vertical integration, and I learned about perceived value. So everything I touch going forward is about vertical integration, how can you control the market? How can you control your own destiny? So with this, I went into Amazon, trying to learn Amazon, trying to understand it. And then how could I become an expert in a short period of time and deliver that to other people. So the best way to do it without using my own capital, was to go out and start managing other people's brands. Everybody in his mother failed seller mostly fell sellers, like 95% of the and I'm pulling that out of the air. But I figure about 90% of the Amazon consultants are failed Amazon sellers, right? So we were I say we because I always talk about my company as a we. But we were out there in the early stages, looking at Brands trying to develop brands, and that would just be managing the overall brand. Well, what could you do next? Well, the next thing that you needed is you had to become an authority. Any anything in econ authority equals trust equals sales, right? So I met this guy named Rob Burns and I started using press releases. These press releases really worked with the company. So content worked, building up. So when somebody looked at you in Google, they knew that you were real. So I ended up buying a company from Rob called PR Reach, and started to break it into more of a communications company. So you could get public relations, press releases, content, which led into another company called HONU Worldwide.  HONU provides the service side of sourcing, logistics, supply chain management, and warehousing. So we've just, we opened up a warehouse this year, we're breaking ground for new warehouse next year, all free the Econ business. So these are the types of businesses that help. Now the other side to the vertical integration is mentoring. So we have a mentoring program called Private Label Legion. And we have some courses and stuff like that I don't need to get into, but all of this put together is vertical integration. So it allows me to take a company, even develop their brand, their website, manage their Amazon, manage off Amazon, provide SOPs, give them everything they need and that is what I mean. Then on the perceived value side of things, it's how can you take the average product that's selling on Amazon or in retail, and get two times three times four times the profit based on perceived value? And it could be minor, minor minor changes, you know, and this comes, I think, Kathi, you know, we talk if you've been on my podcast before, but we talked about organization and that mindset, and that's the same thing with perceived value If you have that mindset, and just sort of, that laid out organized thought process. This isn't a one time homerun, you can continue to increase your profits on an ongoing basis, just by doing some simple steps.

Kathi Burns  8:24  
Yeah, I love that. It's always the simple, small things that make really significant shifts. I say that all the time, the smallest insignificant thing as ripple effects into greater and greater profits and profitability. For sure. So what did it feel like when you landed your first client when you made that, that pivot over and started becoming the Amazon expert?

Norm Farrar  8:46  
It was interesting, because I was at a conference, and I overheard somebody and you've got Okay, so I was at a conference, and I was there with a group of people that I already knew. So these people I met at an earlier Amazon conference, and they were saying, you know, how they were, what they were doing, and the biggest, the most anybody was selling was $5,000 a month, which I thought was crazy. Alright, I've known these people for ever, or well, at least for a year and a half. And they were selling $5,000 a month, like what was going on? I know other people that were selling way more in a very short period of time. They were all huddled around and they were listening to another guy say, Look, if your failed Amazon seller, why don't you buy a course on consulting? And so this is where this first person I picked up as a client. So they had all signed up for this. Now these failed Amazon sellers. It all picked up and they were talking to this other guy. He was from Ireland. And he was a doctor. And I overheard him say something along the lines of if I could only beat the s&p, and I said, well, then he said, I just, I'm a deer in the headlights, I don't understand this other stuff. I don't understand the advertising. Anyways, I'm hearing this, I went over to him, and I just said, I can do that. I hadn't been on Amazon very long. I hadn't proven myself. But I knew from everything I was doing in my past e commerce experience, I could do it. So we got together. I told him a price. He sent me a price. He didn't know the product, I was sourcing. He didn't know the packaging. He didn't know the category. I did it on my own. I gave him like three or four options. He ended up picking it, we put it up. And then we brought in another product in the supplement side. And anyways, that's how it all started. And the answer to your question very long winded was it felt fantastic.

Kathi Burns  11:03  
Haha. And then that goes back to the thing of say you can do it. And then if you say you can do it, you generally can figure out the way to do it, though. And obviously, you've done it very successfully. If you had to give a hack to an entrepreneur who really wants to launch, what's your favorite hack for making progress with your goals? But basically you really want to get out there. If you have a hack that you use personally, when you're first launching something, what is it?

Norm Farrar  11:38  
Well, I don't know if this is much of a hack. But this is something that I do all the time on a daily basis. And I think this gives me a lot more time during the day. And this is night before. Usually I turn off everything like I'm not one of these four hour a day people. But my computer goes off usually around kind of late around nine ish, maybe 10 ish. But before I turn off my computer, I spent 20 minutes on my next day's work. So I create a list. I put it into my calendar, I have my end, some people reverse this. I like doing this. But I go in and I have somebody check my inbox for me. I don't have to do it. Anything that's urgent, I need to see everything is not urgent, I'll see it later on. But priority one task, what do I have to complete first, so I can get the stress off my back. I turn off 100% of all communications, except one urgent email. If there's an urgent email, it goes to a separate email account where somebody like one of my team can get ahold of me and say, This is urgent, stop what you're doing. Other than that, all communication channels are shut off until I'm done. They come back on when I have either my B tasks or C tasks, checking emails. I like doing C tasks before b tests, because I can get 100 done in 30 minutes. That takes those out of you might have to define them as B tasks. But there's a lot of B tasks that are kind of BC ish. And we also make sure that anything that's urgent, we see. Anything that's urgent and important, I see. Anything is important, wait till I'm free. You know, and then if it's just the general, then it can just go and we have a color coding system. So if I see red exclamation mark, when I come back online, and I haven't been told, I know that that's urgent, urgent, important. If it's a red star, it's Yeah, you better look at it. Yellow is general, Green is a receipt that just came in, I don't get to see them. But we put it onto a spreadsheet that I see receipts or payments that have gone out. And then I have a list of spam just they look over very quickly that I look, I don't do it. It's my assistant that helps put all my spam or my junk mail, just so I can go down just to make sure that we didn't eliminate anything. And we also filter a lot. So yeah, that's one hack. There's too much shiny out too many shiny objects too many distractions during the day. Yeah, understand that. If you're working on a project, and somebody interrupts you on Skype, I look over your Skype. Okay. That's going to take me five to 10 minutes to get back into that train of thought. If somebody hits me up on Slack or all I've done and this is really this is a really cool hack. Get a app called RamBox or meet fronds and put all of your communication in there. And then that way you can turn all the apps off, all the apps off on your computer and you can just look over like I look over there, that's my other computer is there's my RamBox, I can see all the messages. Right now I have for Facebook or for messages that have come in five social media messages, three that are on Slack and something from my assistant. So but I'm not looking at it, I just minimize it. And they go ahead and take care of all that. That channels everything into one. One line of communication. Yeah. Another thing that I could probably say is, if you if you have a problem, and this is a mental hack, no matter what the problem is, we've had some serious problems this last month that I've had to go through. But I would have been sick, I would have been physically ill 30 years ago. I wouldn't have been able to sleep, I wouldn't be able to now bounces off my shoulders. I go I eat bonbons, I have a drink and I go to bed. And what I've learned, and somebody told me this early on, is that it'll never ever be as bad as what you think. Ever.

Kathi Burns  16:28  
Yes, that is a truth ism. For sure. Yeah we always fear the worst. I guess it's a defense mechanism or whatever. I love the fact that you organize before you turn off your computer, you do your top four to five tasks. And then the delegation part is so critical to delegate what you don't need to see how other people figure out what you do need to see. That's huge, you have so many systems in place, I very much appreciate all that Norm. Of course, being an organizer, I'm like, You got it, you got it.

Norm Farrar  17:04  
I even have people watch training for me. So I don't have time. And you know that you've gone to the same conferences. You sit there and you've got these great speakers. And it's all fluff, except for midway through to get you hooked and at the last five minutes then there's the pitch for the course. So I don't want to listen to the fluff. So I will get somebody to watch it. Pay them for it of course, they summarize it. And if anything can be implemented into the company, we have a Friday, five strengths, five weaknesses, we train one hour a day, whatever you're in. And then there's what suggestions do you have that we can give the company? This is handed in every Friday, I can look over it, and then we can implement.

Kathi Burns  17:53  
That's fantastic. So what's one lesson that your business has taught you over the years that you wish you would have known in the beginning of it all?

Norm Farrar  18:03  
One lesson is resilience. So resilience is very important because a lot of entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs especially cut out too early. So they're almost there. Their risk tolerance hasn't built up, their stress tolerance hasn't built up, they think that the sky is falling just as everything's turning around. Probably even more important. Mean resilience is very important, but cashflow if you're playing with capital you don't have. So this is money you can afford if you're borrowing from your house or your 401k, Canada, your RRSP if you're doing that, that scared money. And you cannot do that start off small, make sure that you have proper capitalization, personally, friends and family that's easy, but that's a recipe for disaster. It can be you know, a lot of times that doesn't work out credit cards is fairly high debt, you know, so you just have to find ways there's lots of ways to get money in Canada. I'm in Canada right now. I mean, there were government programs that helped with there was a government program last year that allowed you to have a $60,000 loan, but only 40,000 was repayable. So you $20,000 free. So hey, that's great. I took advantage of it. Economic development boards in different cities might have something like that you can take advantage of or be able to go in very inexpensive rent an office. I mean, just don't go and buy every app that's $1299 to $4999, you'll end up that you'll be at $3,000 a month at no time, and you'll never use these apps. Just start off, like, be tight with your money. And make sure that if you do have a home run, I see this happen a ton, when, let's say, a third base hit to a home run. So you've got, you've got a winner. But you can't capitalize the winner is you're taking up all your inventory, or people decide, oh, I'm going to be smart. And I'm going to order six months of inventory in advance. Well, you just messed yourself up. Because you could take your cash flow and do it in, you know, one month increments, smaller chunks of cash and increase the inventory as they come as your sales increase. But cash flow is so bloody important.

Kathi Burns  20:54  
Yeah, absolutely. It's really good advice. There have been so many grants and opportunities out there, especially for women entrepreneur. I took advantage of a lot of them hearing COVID and there's still more to come. Take take advantage of the government programs and score. If you want some, even with some free advice, go to score two, which is here in the United States. So it's senior executives giving advice. So there's all sorts of programs out there for people. And I think that's fantastic advice. Don't mortgage your house gang, figure out a way that you can. And if you mortgaged your house, you don't end up living doing it small, you end up just going wow, so start small and just do incremental income into your business. That's really good advice. So tell me, Norm, one point you might have ever we all go through it at one point in your life. Think about the deep, dark time, when you felt like you were just like slammed and overwhelmed and tired and just burn out. What did you do to get your mojo back? What was your your tactic?

Norm Farrar  21:59  
Well, it's not just me. But if I see employees like this, or contractors, literally this is back in days of paper. I don't know if you remember paper, but that's what we write on. But I remember an assistant that was working with me, and she was overwhelmed, she was completely overwhelmed. And this is exactly what I do on my desk as well, I would have piles of paper, and we just had fun with this, I would go over and I would take it and I would just and then we would start to reorganize. And it would I would block the time. So I could be in an uncertain like, there's nothing I can think of for the most part that will destroy you if you don't get to it immediately. I mean, there might be some but most likely not. I would rather take a breath. If you have to walk away, walk away, come back, throw and literally, that's what I did. And we overground I am not kidding, as well. And I did that to her desk as well. But when she realized what I was doing, and I did it for myself, she seen it, you know, I would pick it up in which A, B or C, A B. And then I all of a sudden clarity would come. And that would be when if I was completely stressed. If I was in a dark place, I mean, really, something happened. Maybe I have to close the business. Everybody has failures. That's a different story. That's a mindset. That's you sometimes you have to take a week, a month. Don't rush yourself and just get back into something because your mind's not clear. This is it. Look, I'm not a doctor. But this is what I done. I know I took a year off. Like I got screwed over so bad once that my trust had been eliminated. If your trust isn't there, how are you going to do business? So you have to you, you have to make sure that your mindsets there. Everybody talks about mindset, you know, nowadays and a lot of it is fluff. But there's a lot of good quality mindset and I believe and we're talking today mindset, it's like my mom said, if you're depressed, make your bed. Start there. And that's a starting point. Well, I do that in business, start making your bed, you'll start getting the files organized. Start with SOPs, okay. And I know that organization has saved my butt. So I got into a rut. Everybody does Once in a while, and it was a longer rut, I lost a big client and I was trying to see how I can make the business survive. And because I had the SOPs to keep everybody in place, we had SOPs in the office, how to make a cup of coffee, five page SOP.  I was able to take the time off. I wasn't bothered. I had a working staff that worked four days a week, our goal our system was, we wanted you to work four days a week, I'll pay for 40. And we had cover off. So if somebody was a project manager, they covered off the other project manager when they took four days off, the other project manager would cover them. So we had enough staff in place that would do that. And anyways, the SOPs, the standard operating procedures, which are not a standard operating procedure, it's a predefined buy in for the corporate culture. So what why, why is this important? The definitions of words that people go like this for that they have no clue what they mean? prerequisites. And what you have to know, are the SOPs, you have to know, the screenshots and all the SOP, the reporting the qualifications, and the templates, where are they all stored? And everything was there. Everything was there. So that was something I started in 1995, from a book I read from Michael Gerber called the E Myth revisited or read the E Myth at the time. Now it's called the E Myth revisited.

Kathi Burns  26:40  
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people call on Michael Gerber for his advice. I actually helped organize his office. Yeah. I love talking to you. Because you talk organization, you got the organization down. We talk the same talk. So it's always fun to hear what you're doing. We all lose our mojo at one point in life. And I think that space creates clarity. And if you're feeling like, I have no idea add some space to your life and clear off your desk, like norm says, and that will definitely do the trick. If nothing else, you'll be able to sleep better, and then wake up feeling more refreshed and more clear. So this leads me into another question. I mean, you've given so much advice out here for people who are in business? What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received from a mentor or from someone that you respect? Or even from your mama?

Norm Farrar  27:40  
Yeah, well, Mama was the making the bed. Yeah, probably the very successful businessman that I talked to. This is way, way back. Maybe even in the late 80s. He was the one while he rephrased it. He said, The sun is always gonna rise from the East instead of the West, there's nothing you can do to change it. And which kind of led to,  the the stress. As a young entrepreneur, I remember losing like 10 grand and having a panic attack. I remember losing $40,000. I remember losing in one day $285,000. I mean, there's so many times that you have these, what am I going to do? How am I going to make payroll? And it always ends up working out. Even if it doesn't work out exactly the way. Guess what? Another door will always open and at the end of it, and I see this all the time. People think they're at the end of their line end of their rope, because they think life has ended that business. Well, you know what, it's a learning experience. take what you've learned from it, move on. Move on.

Kathi Burns  29:03  
It's never as bad as what you think it is. Or it never will get as bad as you visualize it it's going to get.

Norm Farrar  29:09  
Yeah. It's interesting because you've got in the work environment.  I'm very involved with and I think you know, this but I've been involved with the first group of the first Amazon group. This is really bizarre. There were very few Amazon female entrepreneurs. Yeah, it was always a male dominated stage. Still is, still is. So anyways, Melissa Simonsson had I think, you know, Melissa, she's one of our friends. Elena Sarris, she know Melissa quite well. Anyway, she came up with the first event. And this goes back just a couple of weeks before we were all shut down, was very successful. And I remember, and the reason I'm saying this is women have a whole other set of problems that men don't especially old men with beards. But I remember people saying, like, why are you going? It's for women? No, it's not. Did you see the lineup? Like, these are very successful women entrepreneurs, and it was one of the best conferences that I ever went to learn a ton. Now they're more there's been three or four virtual events. But there are things I can't tell you, because I'm not in your shoes, right. But some of the same principles apply. Like, the stress side, I can see if you've got all these pressures coming in from 10 different areas. Alright, what do you do with that? You know, how do you how do you deal with that stress? And the only like, this comes back to that, quote, you know, this, and the organization part is that, it'll never be as bad. You got to kind of keep that in mind. And also, the capitalization part, you don't One thing I've noticed, we weren't going to go down this route. We never talked about this. But I've noticed that a lot of E commerce, female entrepreneurs don't say that they're entrepreneurs.

Kathi Burns  31:36  
Really? What do they say they are?

Norm Farrar  31:38  
They're sellers, but if I go up to a successful female entrepreneur, a lot of really successful ones will say, absolutely I'm a serial entrepreneur, but it takes a lot of successful Amazon sellers, to realize that they are an entrepreneur. I know if you've noticed that. But even at that conference, I met probably 50 women talking about their e commerce experience. And one thing that came up, and they talked about it, like during the conference, ask who's an entrepreneur in the audience? 2%. Three, and that, if you go and do that, in a in a male audience, they're like, puts up their hands. Yeah, both hands. That's an interesting thing. So there's some different complexities here that people don't realize between the the two.

Kathi Burns  32:45  
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I can think back on conferences that I've been out with women, with coaches, with other organizers. Oftentimes, I'm a life coach, well, but they don't claim the entrepreneurial ship, which I think is where the systems fail, or where the systems are never built to actually be an entrepreneurial business. Right. It's like, I'm a coach, I'm not really a business person. So yeah, and I think that a lot of, of the people that will listen to this podcast, think about that yourself, do you consider, you know, I've always I've been a serial entrepreneur my whole life. So no matter what it is that my hat that I'm wearing, I'm still an entrepreneur. And I think if  the women that do embrace the entrepreneurial part of it, then start thinking like a business person, and start building the infrastructure behind the business, as opposed to just being a coach or whatever. It is nothing wrong with being coached by the way. It's just the mindset. I think you're totally right, Norm, as far as which comes first and which are you really, you have to be both?

Norm Farrar  33:57  
Right? Have you have you heard of a lady by the name of Andrea Lake?

Kathi Burns  34:03  
No.

Norm Farrar  34:04  
Oh my gosh, okay. I've got to introduce you. But anyways, she is the this absolutely serial, right. We're saying that too many times. But she's a crazy entrepreneur. And between her and her partner, she sold about a billion dollars with a T shirt. She's been on The Apprentice, as I think Season Five. She's an incredible lady, she has this organization called Power chick mafia.

Kathi Burns  34:37  
Now I've heard of that.

Norm Farrar  34:39  
Oh, my gosh. So they have two sections of it. I hope I'm explaining this right. But the first section is, everybody can go to it. You're an entrepreneur coming in, listen. Then at the 10 million and above level, they have this event where anybody with a beard, get out. It's just people, women that are successful entrepreneurs over $10 million. And whatever they discuss, it's the secret society I'm not allowed into. But anyways, she's fantastic. She's a mentor. She's just an incredible entrepreneur.

Kathi Burns  35:24  
Yeah, I need to have her on the podcast. So I'll definitely do that. That's prime time. Okay, so I know that you have a valuable free resource or something that you can offer other people, the listeners on this podcast, what is it that y'all want to give them Norm?

Norm Farrar  35:39  
Okay, well, we have the lunch with Norm podcast every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And that's with that's basically Amazon and E commerce. It's an Amazon ecommerce podcast that helps people out it's all free. In fact, if any of your listeners are listening, and they want to get more information, I can provide them in our group, a free month or two in Private Label Legion if you'd like. And that's $199 a month that I could just provide if you like.

Kathi Burns  36:20  
Oh, that's very generous. Yeah, we'll put the link down below the podcast when it comes out. And if you guys are looking to go vertical and scale Norm is definitely the guy for that. So join his league and learn what you can learn and then continue forward. You can't go wrong with that. So thanks.

Norm Farrar  36:39  
This is not a hit you with something and sell you something it's not like that this is just go up there to learn become a better online seller.

Kathi Burns  36:49  
Yeah, and I will vouch for Norm. He is a true blue, honest type of guy. Even with the beard. I think the beard actually makes you a little bit more trustworthy.

Norm Farrar  36:59  
Oh, I thought you're gonna say sketchy, but thank you.

Kathi Burns  37:04  
I don't know. I don't know. I think I it's all about the beard. Really? And yours is a trustworthy beard. Well, thank you for your time. I really appreciate you being on the show and check out the resources below.  I always love talking to you, Norm. So thank you for your time.

Norm Farrar  37:23  
You too, Kathi. Thank you.

Kathi Burns  37:24  
Yeah, take care.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good writing from you, to me. Have a stellar day.