Norm Lanier is the CEO of a six-figure, family-owned, Texas-based sign company, creating interior graphic art. Norm earned his BS in photography and began a career in graphic design, working for companies such as Exxon, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard. On his 50th birthday, he celebrated by exiting the corporate world to fulfill his dream of owning a business and designing art to share with the public.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Norm Lanier shares his career background that led to entrepreneurship
• The challenges and obstacles of being an e-commerce seller
• Why Norm decided to drill down and focus on certain products when consumer spending decreased
• Norm explains the complexities of manufacturing and supply chain
• Should you diversify your brand?

In this episode…

The thought of starting a passion business is scary. It’s easy to be complacent working for someone else because of job security and a steady paycheck. With the onset of online startups and mom-and-pop shops, there is plenty of competition for e-commerce entrepreneurs. However, if your passion drives you, you’ll continuously push through the difficult stages of being a business owner.

Norm Lanier is an artist by trade, and his talents earned him jobs at prominent companies. When he felt the time was right, he retired to put his passion to work for himself. Though he’s enjoyed success as a brand owner, he’s also endured obstacles that have hindered the business’ growth. Novice e-commerce entrepreneurs experience many pain points, but there are focus areas to help cut down on expenses: Identify levers that impact the business, simplify the business by implementing the 80/20 rule, and invest in PPC.

In this episode of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, Josh Hadley welcomes Norm Lanier, Strategy Audit Session Winner and CEO of an Amazon private label, to discuss growing a small business and planning for a business exit. Norm shares key takeaways and insights that he’s learned as an e-commerce entrepreneur, including prioritizing key areas of the business, manufacturing and chain supply, and brand diversification.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Josh Hadley on LinkedIn
• eComm Breakthrough Consulting
• eComm Breakthrough Podcast
• Email Josh: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com
• Hadley Designs
• Hadley Designs on Amazon
• Norm Lanier on LinkedIn

Special Mention(s):

• Kevin King
• Roland Frasier on LinkedIn
• Michael E. Gerber on LinkedIn
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Related Episode(s):

• “Kevin King’s Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans”
• “Seven Acquisition Strategies to Scale to Eight Figures and Beyond”

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure ecommerce owners grow to eight figures. Of course…

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

As a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com with the subject line “Strategy Audit” and tell me why your business should win the free audit for the chance to win and don’t worry, if you don’t win the free strategy audit this month, you’ll automatically be entered for future months.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales. But the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level. Join Josh Hadley, an eight-figure e-comm business owner and investor, as he interviews highly successful business owners. Get ready because you’re going to learn specific actions you can take today to help your business reach its full potential and leave a lasting impact on the world.

Josh Hadley 0:36

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E. Gerber, author of the E-Myth, and Roland Frasier. Today I am speaking with Norm Lanier. He is the CEO of his own Amazon private label business that he’s been running for over a decade now. And he has lots of experience. In fact, Norm is one of the lucky winners of my comprehensive business strategy audit sessions. And so today, I’m super excited that we’re going to be diving into the conversation, the audit that we just performed on Norm’s business, and he’s going to be sharing his takeaways, the insights that he’s gleaned. He’s already doing millions of dollars in business, but he has aspirations to continue to grow his business, and to hopefully one day be able to exit that business. And today, that’s the conversation that we had. And we talked about it. So before we dive into that, I want to also just give a quick shout out and let people know that you could also receive a comprehensive business audit, as well, all you need to do is email me at Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com. That’s e-comm with two M’s, and in your subject line, go ahead and say Strategy Audit, then plead your case as to why I should choose you to win this month’s free strategy on it. And don’t worry, if you don’t win this month, you’ll be entered to win for future months to come. So Norm with that introduction, I want you to kind of give us a quick intro about yourself, how you got started into the e-comm world and what you’ve been doing over the last decade.

Norm Lanier 2:22

Yeah, thanks, Josh. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your listeners also. I’ve been doing first e-comm business I kind of came in the back door and started that in 2004 started building some side hustles while I was an employee at HP got to the point where I was making more on my side hustles in my real job. So for my 50th anniversary, I 50th birthday, I turned in my resignation. And I’ve been doing Amazon and in Shopify, Etsy, a lot of different marketplaces since then full time. And that’s kind of where I’m at today.

Josh Hadley 3:07

I love it. And Norm and I dance in the same space, sometimes we might be considered competitors. But there’s such a big marketplace out there that we were able to, you know, really kind of lift to open the hood today and really dive into each other’s businesses, he was able to ask me a lot of questions. And hopefully I was able to share some valuable insights with you Norm. And that’s what we’ll talk about. Norm, we first started off by talking about, you know, what is your overall goal? In in your business? Right? And what are the biggest obstacles that you’re facing? So why don’t you go ahead and kind of reiterate what we started our conversation off with?

Norm Lanier 3:46

Yeah, so you know, just taking a look, and I think I’m falling into the same category is, is most people selling in the E commerce space right now, dealing with more competition, things are constantly moving, you know, the economy is down to a degree. So I think in our space, we’re seeing, you know, some pullback on on spend it over the last couple of years. So this created challenges right in and you know, as we as we mentioned, I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I really had gotten to the point where a couple of years ago and stuff I really felt like I was out of touch that before it was pretty easy for me. I really felt like I had it dialed in. And over the past few years, it really felt like I was kind of losing control. And a lot of that had to do with not having the proper dashboards and tools to be able to evaluate kind of where we’re at on a very granular level, right because it’s one thing to see your big number and your paychecks and all those things come in on a monthly basis. But you know, on a product level after shipping fees and advertising and All of those refunds and so forth, what is each product actually generating as far as income and what is really driving bottom line growth. And once I got the proper tools in place, really kind of opened my eyes, that a lot of products that we had, it’s like, why am I even bothering with this when it’s all said and done, I’m not making any money is certainly not worth the effort on this. So we’ve really have gone in and cleaned up our catalog and eliminated a lot of stuff, a lot of excess inventory. And then we’ve been working on trying to get inventory under control where we’re not running out of inventory. Right. So we’re constantly playing that game also.

Josh Hadley 5:37

Yeah. So Norm, what was your intention of signing up for this strategy on it? What was your hopes that you would walk away from this meeting with?
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