Josh Hadley 6:28
Interesting. That is super interesting. I have so many questions to ask you about, you know, creating that community. But to help our listeners kind of understand everything that you’re involved in. Carlos, tell me more about, you know, you’ve got a lot of business ventures, you’ve got a podcast, you’ve got a lot of meetups, you’re also a seller yourself. And so you have your own e-comm brands. Tell me more about all the things that you have going on?
Carlos Alvarez 6:55
Wow, we have we need two hours for that. But I’ll do the quick one on it. I have over 50 businesses, I’m obviously not fully involved in all of them, that would just be impossible, even with an amazing team. Most of the businesses are not e-comm related, but they’re all funded initially by Granddaddy Bezos, if you will. And it was just I got suspended when I first started Amazon, and I was just like, I really don’t think this is going to last more than a few years. And this is 15 years ago, I need to get into something else. So I would get a percentage of the money I was bringing in. And I would start something else. So everything from just brick and mortar to coin operated laundry, it could be a dog grooming thing, it could be a salsa dance studio, whatever it might be, I’d have those I have some service based businesses I started. So I have a lot of that going on. Amazon and selling on Amazon has always been the lion’s share of my revenues and what I do and I passions. I’ve successfully started and exited 17 brands to date. 14 of them I started and exited the other three and I was part of during an exit. The last three were on a roll up at the beginning of last year, I think before the spigot got turned off, if you will in the Amazon aggregator space. Yeah, the only brand I have left right now is my brand of live insects, which is which is also my largest one. And it’s also like a big shocker for most people like wow, you could sell live insects online. And I happily married, dog, two kids trying to model how you have your life going on the personal side, why not taking my foot off the gas on the professional side. The community, the community seven years old as far as the Wizards of Ecom community, and I’d have to say that that’s my biggest passion right now. And it’s free. So it’s not like there’s a hidden gem to the back of the room. Give me your 401 K type of turnkey thing. It’s free. I feel like my motives for doing that is to grow. We’re talking a little bit about before starting the podcast about like how you’re not you are an actual seller. So like having people on the show that are sellers, you might learn some tactics from them that you can apply in your own business. So there’s a lot of that going on podcast, Wizards of Ecom, an annual event called Online Seller Cruise, and I think I Oh, and a brand called Salsa Kings, which is the number one Latin dance studio in the United States. I have business partners on that. Yeah, I think that sums it up. It’s a lot, and I do all with 242 virtual assistants and an army of domestic employees. Just learned early from a coach that Chris Ducker who I don’t know if you know, there’s so learned early they’re just just hire people smarter than you. And that’s what I did.
Josh Hadley 9:34
Carlos, this is brilliant. Now my mind’s going a million miles an hour. You’re incredible and I hope our listeners like they understand the value that you have to offer in your business expertise. Guys where you’re at we are talking to a nine-figure Amazon e-commerce seller like this guy knows what he’s talking about. Carlos, question before we dive into the whole community thing that I have personally is you have over 50 different businesses, not all of them are e-commerce businesses. My question is, how do you manage 50 different businesses? I assume you have an operator running each of those businesses for you. But still, how do you find the time to do that?
Carlos Alvarez 10:18
I want to, I want to like full transparency here, say that I don’t feel how I do it, or what I’m doing is the correct way to do it, or even a healthy way to do it. I also absolutely love what I do, right? So I mean, when I started doing this, I was a runner. Now I’m 320 pounds. And, you know, like, it’s come, I’ve made some bad choices, if you will, along the way to do this. And if I could go back, I would have gotten out of certain things earlier, probably. I’ve also learned a lot off of touching the stove, so to speak. So I’ve — you get burned, you learn from it, and you do it a little different. I think it would have been a lot better with hindsight to get a strategy breakdown of my business and what’s going on and make some decisions. Make some better decisions along the way. But how I do it is I’m not actively involved in all of them. I’m 100% reliant on SOPs processes. And I would answer I would have answered this very different a few years ago, but I’m a fan of read a book called Traction. Uh huh. Yep. Gino Wickman. And there’s another book and I believe he co authored this, and this is how I’m going to answer this now. And that is, I believe it’s Rocket Fuel or rocket ship or something. Rocket Fuel. Yeah, I’m a vision. I’m a visionary. I really am. I’m a 150,000,000% visionary, and that clarity and being able to like, raise my hand and say, Oh, that that is actual work. And that is important. I don’t have to be plugging away at these things I hate. I wish someone would have told me that a long time ago, but I’m a visionary how I do it, I have these ideas. I know how to natural to me. And to me, I’ve always felt other people were all this way. And it’s just not the case. I know, it’s gonna I feel like I know really accurately what’s going to happen four years from now in a specific industry. And I just, my mind just works amazingly, at putting those pieces together on how to get there. And as long as I partner with people that love implementing that, or the integrator, if someone’s read the book, then it’s actually not as hard as it seems. So like, know your place, stay in your lane. And, and you can soar.
Josh Hadley 12:31
I love that. One question I have is, as you choose an operator, you’ve got to find smart people. So where, who are the smart people that you’re finding? How do you find them? That you’re literally trusting because you’re not involved? 100% in many of the businesses, you’re trusting them to run things on a continuous basis. You can’t be involved. You can’t be answering emails, you can’t be troubleshooting. So how do you find those type of people that can lead those different business units for yourself?
Carlos Alvarez 13:04
Yeah, I wish I if I could answer that, I would be a bazillionaire. Like, if I could tell you a one size fits all for that I think I would be a bazillionaire. I don’t, I don’t think you can, it would almost be saying like how to go out and find your soulmate. And, and that’s really what it is, but for your business, and honestly, a lot of people spend more time in their businesses and invest more of their energy in their businesses and they do their personal relationships. So it’s, it’s a very difficult thing to to answer, I would say, one of the first things you have to do is work on you, and be okay with that. And for the majority of the time in my entrepreneurial career, if you will, I wasn’t okay with that I needed this micromanaging thing. I felt like I needed to do it all. So read those books first, like read Traction read Rocket Fuel, if I’m getting that right then a Rocket Fuel and they have a breakdown in the book that you can take an assessment to figure out like who you are in this relationship. Someone listening to this may need a visionary or a visionary, not an integrator. For me, I’m open to it. And I try to surround myself in circles where there’s a lot of other integrators if you will, and I’m always open to like start the relationship I’m always open to like hey, look, I want you to have a piece of this I want you to have ownership here. It’s become very difficult I feel like it’s became a lot more difficult to do virtually than it is in person. But if we limit ourselves just to like in-person I think harder so we just have one added added sounds bad like maybe we got added to his life but name con on such a brilliant integrate. But Khan came into the company as running our video team, just like the most random thing. And we took a Gallup strength poll which I started implementing through the company and this person came back with like for the same four out of five as me, and I was like, wait a minute, like you ain’t supposed to be in video. Like let’s talk. Fascinating. I don’t have a direct answer, like click here. A push that and this is what happens.
Josh Hadley 15:02
Well, what I did glean from that, though, as you said, you’re you’re going and you’re joining groups where a lot of integrators hang out, what are some of those groups where you’re seeing a lot of integrators hang out?
Carlos Alvarez 15:14
A lot of like entrepreneurial communities, especially ones that kind of like, portray themselves as like, nothing but visionaries. And I found that even though I’m not the most unique person in the world, I find that it’s very hard to get a group of like, 50 visionaries together. So if somebody’s claiming that they’re doing that, in reality, there’s probably 30 of 30, or 40, integrators in there that just have a struggle, claiming them like claiming the role of integrator. So maybe I should have worded that differently. I go to a lot of entrepreneurial events. And I network, I socialize with people and I, I talk about problems that I have. And if I’m talking to a visionary, they start talking about the future, or they start talking about 50 things that I can implement immediately. If I’m talking to someone who’s an integrator, they immediately start getting into, like, how that thing could be solved? Who are the people who need in place to solve that?
Josh Hadley 16:07
Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. And I love that you’re, you’re being vulnerable as well as you attend these right? And you’re socializing with people. And you’re telling them what’s really going on instead of like, dude, everything’s great. I’m a nine-figure seller, like, I’m just crushing it. You know, like, when you go in, and you’re real, and you’re candid with people, I think, you know, doors of opportunity, certainly opened up for you. Another thing that I gleaned from what you had talked about is that, you know, you’re giving them a piece of the pie. Do you mind me asking? Like, do you have a typical deal structure that you have to bring in people that are going to run things for you? Is it? Are they getting the majority of the business? Is it 50/50? I’m sure you have various deals out there. But what is the most common one look like for you?
Carlos Alvarez 16:55
I’ve never, I’ve never given up more than 20% of the company, I couldn’t imagine doing 50% or more, I don’t have a specific structure or a specific deal structure that I do for that it’s very dependent on the person, what they bring to the table. How we plan on working together where the company is at some of the companies to that I have also let me say I don’t have the perfect integrator in all my companies. This is something majority of my companies actually do not have one. But some of my companies are act as sort of parent companies to other smaller ones. Like, I’m not going to have a pet grooming store that has an integrator and a visionary and a CMO and like all this other stuff, but I might have a company that controls several companies. And so it’s okay. It depends on the company.
Josh Hadley 17:40
Makes makes a lot of sense. Well, you’ve gotten my juices flowing. Now, Carlos, I love that we could spend the whole conversation just talking about that and having a portfolio of businesses. The one thing that I want to touch on before we move into the community aspect, is you mentioned that you had made some mistakes that you know, you would learn by touching the hot stove, to stay away from it. What are some of those mistakes that you could share with our audience so that maybe some of us don’t need to repeat some of those things that you’ve learned from?
Carlos Alvarez 18:10
Oh, yeah, that’s a phenomenal question. I think there, it would be great to just have podcasts dedicated to mistakes. I agree. Or maybe go through like the whole list of people we’ve had on our respective shows and just say we’re gonna do an episode on you and the mistakes you’ve made, but I’ve made a lot and I still make them. I, I’d say one of the, one of the earliest, massive mistakes I’ve made is, I had this business. And it was actually what you’d call an Amazon wholesale business. And this was 1009 ish. And we grew this thing to, I think it was like 16 million in sales. And at the time, I knew I’m an elementary school dropout, I barely got my GED i And now you have millions of dollars circulating. And that’s a key word here, like circulating around in bank accounts and marketplaces that have my name on it. It got to my head. And I was a real jerk. It was like one of these people that you couldn’t get around without dropping the M word, you know, millions. And in reality, every time I pull up to the gas station, I’d be cycling through the last four numbers of like credit cards, wondering which one wouldn’t decline and with like my girlfriend at the time in the car, and we were just like completely upside down, but it was very hard. You have a lot of like, super experienced listeners on the show. So to them, they’re probably like, yeah, of course that can happen. But when you’re when you’re first starting off, and you have that kind of success quickly, you don’t know and with no background in it, you don’t you’re not just born with it. So business partner and I we, we clash. We need to go our separate ways. And ironically, his uncle, I think it was his uncle. He sat me down because I was like, I need a lawyer. I need a lawyer to break this up. I have multimillion dollar business and I need help. So he sat down with me this one weekend and we’re like pizza and He knows how to do this stuff. And at the end of the weekend, he says, Well, the good news is you don’t need a lawyer, right? And the bad news is, you’re not making any money, you’re moving money, you’re not making money. And I really took me, I think weeks until I could tell you what the difference between the two was. So a massive mistake, there was the difference between just moving money and making money reveled in revenues, or revenues, or vanity profits or sanity. I didn’t hear that so later, but that’s a very real thing. I pay a lot more attention to that. It seems like common sense. But it’s actually a lot harder said than done. In my opinion. That was one really big mistake. Another one was we we had some products manufactured incorrectly. And we went this might even tie in to the other one, because we went, we’re like, oh, we have $40,000 in the bank. On this one situation. Let’s spend $38,000 on inventory and China, no thought towards operating expenses. Our biggest resource that we had was we were willing to work 24/7 with energy drinks and stay up all night. So I will outwork you type of thing. Yeah. And we went all in on this product. And we got it back. And we realized when we received it that it was that it was patented. Oh. And then we told ourselves, it’s pouring rain trailer, you know, container, unloads were tarping. So it does, the boxes don’t get wet, and we have time to move it into our brand new we’re working out of an Extra Space Storage Unit, we have like multiple Extra Space Storage Units. With fold up tables at the time. This is like early days and getting rained on we create, you always want to crack the box open and look at one unit of each thing you brought in, right. I don’t know why. It’s almost like when you go to the airport, walking to your gate, even though you’re two hours early, saying Yep, it’s there and then going to go do something else, right. But we did this. And we realized our mistake in all honesty. And then we said, well, what’s the minimum that we should sell that we can sell of this just to recoup our money back because we were all in on this. Instead of saying, you know, we’re wrong, we need to take this as a loss. And we did it. And within two weeks, we were served, papers were sued. And another lesson came out of that I guess this will be the last one I’ll try to do really quick is we got sued, they were suing us we were dead, dead wrong. And we got in this suit. They wanted stuff from us that we just couldn’t, we couldn’t come up with. So the lawyer say whatever you do, don’t talk to them. So I ignored it. I contacted the actual brand owner, and I just told him pretty much what I told you. And I was like, I’m in the wrong. Like I knew the business. I want to grow and be like a business like you actually have. I have questions I’d like to ask you. And they asked me how many units do you have? I told him, they said deliver it all to us. So I said absolutely. We got you halls. And we drove it and we delivered it. And as the person is saying bye to us to leave, I said what are the chances that I can open up an account with you and actually resell your products, legitimate products, he laughed, and I wound up becoming the exclusive seller of that brand, the lawsuit goes away. So being able to operate under pressure was a big one.
Josh Hadley 23:09
I love that, Carlos, those are some amazing examples. And I love that, you know, we all paint this picture of like, everything’s great. But I love that through adversity, you were able to, you know, hustle your way to like making something beautiful out of something that was such a negative, you know, experience to begin with so many lessons that we could glean from there. I’m going to ask you just for one more, do any others come to the top of your mind because I feel like these are some of the biggest, like lessons learned that I think a lot of our listeners can take away a lot of value from
Carlos Alvarez 23:47
for this one. I’m hoping every listener here does not deal with this. So my wife and I get married and this isn’t the issue. It’s good to get married, right? So my wife and I get married. But she’s a social butterfly. My wife is like the most amazing loving person on earth. Right? In my opinion. Right? She has like eight I think they’re called maids of honor, or something like she has like eight of them. I’m a introvert e-comm guy, I don’t have that many friends, right? Like the only people I can think of are business partners. And at this time, things are imploding with business partners, and this is what I’m going to get to. So she has me just grab the closest people I could that were business partners. And we look at this photo that we have now this is like this big photo. It’s an important photo you get in your wedding and it shows all the groomsmen and this man and then her maid of honor and all the think there are other maids of honor like the other side. And it’s this perfect balance. I have been are in active lawsuits with because of like issues of with the business and business partner lack of operating agreements, or we don’t talk anymore, and some of those people are family members of mine and it all started with business. So there’s two books I would highly recommend, as it pertains to this. One of them is The Founder’s Dilemma. by Noam Wasserman and the other one is Slicing Pie. And this is sort of the story I’d like to paint here is my first business, my ex-girlfriend at the time, she had a sister and she was dating someone. And as that goes, the sisters like to hang out and you wind up becoming close friends with this other person. And he had a full ride scholarship to medical school coming up. You got to be a brain for this, right? Yeah, and drove a nice car, how to like, do things. And I was very impressed with him. So I start at the time, I’m working as like a cigar salesman at the store. And I’m reselling the used goods, scratches and dents on like eBay at the time. And I feel like I’m doing good and good for me is like, half my mortgage. And that’s, that’s amazing. And this person says, Why don’t you open a business? Okay. And I think it was like one of the first businesses I opened, and this person saw the sales doubled towards paying my mortgage. And this guy with a full ride medical scholarship said, I’d like to be your business partner. And it was such a validation for me that like, oh, the screw up the elementary school dropout, you know, Carlos screwed up again, has someone with a full ride to be a doctor that wants to partner with and I was like, Yeah, 50/50? For sure. Absolutely. I mean, I was most impressed that he could install a printer, you know. So like, I was like, absolutely. So what happened was, I’m a visionary. I never run out of ideas. Yeah. And this person was, in a way had a lot of integration skills going on, I know, you don’t want to be called, it’s hard to give him a compliment, even to this day. He’s an integrator. But just because someone’s an integrator, and you’re a visionary does not mean you guys are a good match. So I kept saying, having these ideas, and he kept saying, You need to open a business. So I’d open a business, and what do I do as part of the business without even reaching out to him? 50-50. You’re my business partner 50-50. And then we started getting other business partners. And you’re like, Okay, well, what do we put on LinkedIn, on the CEO, and we’ll just you start tossing out the C-level roles. Yeah, company. But what happens is, if you have a good idea, and you know what you’re doing, then guess what happened, the business might succeed. And when the business succeeds, and you need to start taking on investments in getting loans and bringing people in that know what they’re doing. And they’re like, why is this clown, your CFO? And you’re like, Okay, well, we’ll fix that, we’ll fix that. So what do you do, you just move them to some other C-level role that he’s not qualified for, because he’s your, he’s your friend, and, or you have the stones to go and say, Hey, man, you’re no longer having any C role, we’re still going to party over ribs and brainstorm. And you’re still part of the business. But that never gets received? Well, it’s like an ego hit. So an operating agreement, not just tossing out the C roles, because you think you need to fill them. And being clear as to who is responsible for what could have saved me, I could have had a lot more friendships, a lot more contact with certain members of my family, I would had businesses that didn’t have to go under, they went under because they succeeded not because of a bad idea. I would, I would caution, people listening to this to let you see yourself on that path or in the path, sit down with your business partner, or would be business partner, ask them to read or listen to The Founder’s Dilemma, put something on the calendar and say, Hey, in two weeks, we’re gonna we’re gonna get to this, if you’re not a fast reader, you can listen to it if they’re not willing to do that. Or if they I already read that, oh, I read the whatever on if they’re not willing to do that is a very good indicator that you should not be business partners with this person. And talk about this. Break it down, protect yourself, set your business up for success, save some equity. That would be my other story to share. I hope that’s relevant. But just top of mind for me.
Josh Hadley 28:30
Yeah, I think that’s super relevant. And I think it goes back to when I asked you the question like, how do you partner and what percentage of equity are you giving to people? Now, I think in hindsight, that’s why you say, hey, nobody has more than 20% of the business. And I think you’ve learned your lessons.
Carlos Alvarez 28:48
I thought you were saying that in reference to just integrators, not just other partners,
Josh Hadley 28:52
Well, just in general like, is that something that you’ve learned? Like, the way you structure your deals now, I’m sure is because of all of the learnings that you’ve gone through, right? And you referenced those books, as well. Yeah,
Carlos Alvarez 29:02
Now, I will not have a business. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have business partners, but I will not have a business partner outside of my wife. Which at the end of the day, that is the number one mastermind and business partner you have. So like outside of my wife, I will not have a business partner unless they are like a patent attorney, or like some kind of brilliant engineer that could like bring some products to life affordably rapidly that I can’t do myself. If it’s outside of that. I’ll hire it.
Josh Hadley 29:31
Hmm. Why is that?
Carlos Alvarez 29:32
Um, just so many bad experiences with business partners, and learning so many, like having a business partner to do something and they didn’t really do it? And they’re like, in the Bahamas, with their girlfriend and it’s Christmas Day and I’m in the office slaving away and I wind up having to do I haven’t having to get good at what they were doing. Anyway. I just said you know what, I ain’t gonna do this anymore. I know how to do this stuff. I shouldn’t be do be doing some of it. But I do know enough to get it hired, I do know how to hire a manager to watch that I do know what you should be able to yield at x experience low.
Josh Hadley 30:07
Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense. So you’ve learned through the school of hard knocks, to get where you are today. And I think that’s the most important thing is that when our listeners, when you go through difficult times, see these as opportunities to learn from and to grow from, you only fail when you quit. And that’s what I love about your story here. You didn’t you you talked about your journey, when in 2009. With the wholesale business, you’re figuratively crushing it with 16 million in revenue. But then in all reality that that wasn’t the case. Your story didn’t end there, which is like, well, apparently, I was stupid. So then I left that e-commerce space and just started working at McDonald’s, right? Like, I love that it was like, No, then I found something else, then I learned from that, then I learned from that. And then I learned from that. And here’s where I am today. So I love that aspect about your journey, Carlos. Now let’s dive into some real meat and potatoes of what I think you’re an expert in. And that is building a community. And I’m curious with our listeners that are seven-figure sellers that want to grow and scale to eight figures and beyond. Why is community important in terms of building a brand?
Carlos Alvarez 31:20
A bazillion reasons, but one of the ones that I think every listener would agree with here is cost per click in ads is not going anywhere, but up, and it’s going to continue to go up. Whereas so having a community, I don’t think it should be looked at as cold blooded as that’s a start. But having a community is going to really protect you from a lot of that. Having a community is going to allow you to pre sell products, which is like something that not enough people talk about gonna be able to give you direction as to what products you should get into, it’s going to allow you to look at products that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to like going back to that to that yoga mat example. I have, I hear a lot of people talk about, I’m not going to get into that product is too competitive. If I can build a community around that product, there is no such thing as that. There’s that if you’re reliant on PPC, for ranking something, I’m just gonna use Amazon as an example. There is no such thing as too competitive, I can build a community around it, because I’m gonna be able to sell it to my community at full price, I’m going to be able to get all my reviews, I’m going to be able to do all of that without the cost that it’s going to take a PPC. So it’s like it’s almost there’s no such thing. So you’d almost be your brand knows becomes like eight feet tall and bulletproof. In that sense. Yeah, the community. The one thing I will say is, I know, I can build communities, I’ve done them for several different brands, different different categories. What I don’t know how to do, and I really wouldn’t even encourage someone to do build a community, when you’re not genuinely into the thing that you’re selling and the brand that you have. I’m not saying you can’t do it, it’s just not speaking to like how I do things. So I don’t want to sit here and say like, just create a Facebook group, have your VA put inspirational Confucius quotes on Canva and post them automatically every Tuesday. Like that’s not a community. Yeah. I’m also not saying that you can’t have a Facebook, my communities have been in-person. And I chose that because I believe it’s the one that the majority of my competitors will not do for sure. They will not do it. It turns into this, how many hours I have to spend and I have to go where what if only two people show it like you know, in the beginning, it’s all that like you’re not willing to put yourself out there. It has this flywheel effect, though. So most of my competitors won’t do it. So that’s where I want to be.
Josh Hadley 33:38
Yeah, I think that’s a very true point. everybody’s worried about, you know, the overseas sellers are just undercutting me, and it’s a race to the bottom in prices. Yeah, that can be true. But at the end of the day, if you have a brand and a following and a community that you’re talking about, like you mentioned, that’s where you start to become bulletproof. So, Carlos, with your experience, let’s say I’m on board, I understand I need to have a community. But where in the world do I begin?
Carlos Alvarez 34:07
I think it’s going to depend on the category. So maybe like if we had an example product or like an example something I don’t know if you had one or if I just randomly let’s
Josh Hadley 34:16
let’s do let’s do planners. Can we do planners?
Carlos Alvarez 34:20
We could do planners. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, let’s do that. And we didn’t rehearse this at all.
Josh Hadley 34:25
No, we didn’t. This is off the cuff. This is off the cuff, putting Carlos on the spot.
Carlos Alvarez 34:29
I look at that immediately. And I’m just like talking out loud here. I’m like, okay, a planner. If somebody has a planner, that means they’re organized. Maybe they’re into time efficiency. So I’m like, Okay, what is the things going on right now that can give people quick wins, if you’re going to bring someone into your community, and maybe that’s going to be an event, right? That could be a meetup meetup has done phenomenal for me, but I use meetup as an example so much that I think I don’t want someone to be confused that it has to be meetup.com. It’s just the cheapest one. It has a built in URL audience and it’s local. So you’re going to get people you don’t need people to fly to your Meetup event. And I would say right now, what are the things that if I’m instance, I’m into planners, I actually am? What are the things that I’m also into regarding this? Like, why do I want a planner that brings up for me like automation, that to me, that taps into the one right now. And this is the one I would probably go with on the first event would be AI. Like what or I would probably go to ChatGPT. And say, give me five meetup events, topics that incorporate AI into planning into planners, and spit that out, that would probably be my event titles, then I would get feedback from the actual community that’s there. And a mistake I think people make is they subscribe to like Survey Monkey, or they get like a Google form. And they put it out there with like five or six questions, and they’re like, answer these so we can grow the group. And that usually falls very flat. But what people love to do, especially in communities, is they love to tell you why your idea is bad. And so if like if I want feedback from people on when, what time I think we should meet, if I put that out there in a survey for future events, I’m probably going to get nothing, especially early in the group. But if I say I think it’s a great idea, we’re going to start meeting at 8:30am. On Saturdays, everyone will jump in as to why 8:30 on Saturdays is bad, what time would actually be much better, and you get an actual conversation going on in your community. And at the end of the day, you actually get real feedback as to when you should really meet. So I would do that to start. If If I only had one planner, I probably would not do a giveaway of that planner. Because in communities, you do not need to do giveaways, you don’t need to give your product away to be there, they’re into this thing that you do and you have, you can sell it to them full price. But I also don’t want to sell right out the gate. So what I would give is I’d give some kind of some kind of freemium something that I can give someone, whether it’s a loom video, whether it’s a print out or something, and I would, then I would go in and again, and I’d ask for the feedback from the group and get them to you know what other topics they’re interested in. By planner, you do mean something that’s like planning your day? Getting organized with your day, right?
Josh Hadley 37:10
Yeah, yeah, like a daily planner.
Carlos Alvarez 37:14
Yeah, I’d let the group know, hey, I use something called TaskRabbit. That allows me to get more done during my day by getting pretty much local VAs or local help to be able to do the things that I am not qualified to do, or I just keep putting off and don’t get done. And I’d say you guys interested in getting together and all putting together the best TaskRabbit freelancers we’ve used. And we sort of create this group power page on how to get help for anything we need around our local area with standing in line or whatever. So I create the community around that. And then I would look for local events that support the thing. That’s the main topic of our group. And I said you guys want it doesn’t have to be my event. And I think it’s important not to because throwing an event is a big deal. But like, I just want to go to this together. That’s how I would approach it.
Josh Hadley 37:58
How many people do you get that originally joined that first meetup group, right? And like, what like how large of a community are you talking about building.
Carlos Alvarez 38:07
So I’ll use a one that I started for dog shedding no longer exists, it was a dog shedding tool. And that was kind of like my, hey, I want to create a community around dogs and pets and pet owners, another one around scuba, and then I’ll use the one that I always talk about now, which is wizards of e-comm community. So we’re talking about three different ones. Every single one of them started with four people on the first event three people plus me, for me, there were several of the meetup events between the first one and the 10th. One where I was the only one and I would take a picture of myself and like, kind of like on purpose accidentally catch some people in the table behind me. And then say, look forward to seeing everybody at the next event. And it’s implying that there was more people there because no one wants to go if it’s just you and them and then you guys have to talk. Yeah, so it implies that this scuba one wound up growing. This is local, pre-COVID. There was no Zoom or Meetup. So this is all local, the scuba one grew to a little over 5,000 members. Wow, locally, one grew to right, the pet one grew to like 1,600 members, the Wizards of Ecom one we’ve exceeded 50,000. And that’s Central Florida down that had they’re not all active, but a large percentage are. And it’s important to note here, if you have 1,000 people in a Facebook group and 1,000 people locally, the 1,000 people locally is like the equivalent of 50,000 on a virtual group. It’s got a much more powerful impact to it. These are — they know each other. They’re building real relationships together. It’s a totally different ballgame.
Josh Hadley 39:41
How long did it take you to build up to 5,000 people in your scuba group, 1,600 in your pet group?
Carlos Alvarez 39:48
Took the scuba one to get to that number. I’m gonna say two years. Yeah, I’m gonna say it took two years it could be two and a half. The pet one pet one was rapid. We just started hitting done All parks, dog parks and we got, you know, two people that had local grooming places. And we paid them for their time. And we just had them do free D shedding, like right there in the park to join the group. And then the Wizards of Ecom one that’s been going on for seven years.
Josh Hadley 40:17
Fascinating. And with that, how often were you meeting?
Carlos Alvarez 40:22
So the scuba one started at once a month, it quickly went to once a week. The pet one was once a week. And wizards of e-comm started with once a month, a couple months in it went to once a week. Now it’s I think we have 25 events per month. Wow. But we have a physical location in Miami, you have a physical location to meet in Tampa, chapters in LA, San Diego, Orange County and soon Orlando. So that one’s spreading way beyond local, which is something that could totally have been done with the other groups had I not exited. Fascinating.
Josh Hadley 40:55
This is super exciting. Now with the scuba in the pet group then, like, what was the purpose of those like meetups? What? What were the people doing on a weekly basis? Was it just to get together and chat about scuba? Or was it more like, Hey, I’m bringing in a speaker or I’ve got a topic that I’m presenting on? Like, what was it that continued to drive people that want to show up weekly?
Carlos Alvarez 41:23
Well scuba classes, one, so people can become scuba certified. And that was actually super easy. It was just going to people who actually do that and saying, Hey, I have an audience, you don’t know how to get people. I have people that want to get this like let’s marry the two. The other one was what were the reasons and that people wanted to get into scuba. A really big one was underwater photography. So getting into the gear that’s involved with underwater photography, having people to come in and share. This is where I went, if you ever go here do this was a really hot topic. And you didn’t need to like with the Wizards of Ecom I got to plan out there might be a PowerPoint presentation, I got to know everything that we’re going to do for the entire time that we’re there. But with the pets and with the scuba, the conversation just runs away. Everyone is really wanting to geek out and talk about this with other people that are just as passionate about it as them. And they all start sharing experiences. And you know, not a single scuba event went by without somebody mentioning a shark experience or like underwater fire coral, and we live in Miami. So it’s a phenomenal place to actually dive. So yeah, those are the topics but you’re never I never I never started a group that I didn’t have a fear that I wouldn’t have a topic for every week. But there’s a tool called Answer the public, which I haven’t got heard Neil Patel purchased. I haven’t gone back to it since he’s purchased it not because of any reason. But if you go there for any topic whatsoever, you could come up with two meetup topics a week for a year, no problem. So that’s never an issue that was even an issue for me was starting the podcast. I don’t know if it was for he was like, What am I gonna talk about every week. But in reality, it’s so easy to get queued up so far in advance on these topics that you have to rein yourself in. So make sure you’re catching time sensitive stuff in your niche.
Josh Hadley 43:14
So true. So true. Carlos, this has been an amazing conversation. We got to wrap things up here. But is there anything else that you would like to add on that we haven’t necessarily talked about or touched on in regards to building the community?
Carlos Alvarez 43:28
I would share a quick story as to like how I use community to actually get into my first brick-and-mortar retail stores. So I would go to farmers markets to advertise my products. And the at the farmers markets, it’s really hard to get people to stop and hang out at your booth. But when you’re bringing your own community locally, even if it’s like four or five people when you first start that changes everything. So I would have at this time when I was doing a candied bacon brand. I was having people come and sample this candied bacon and use the shortcode like text the word pig to 69922. And they’d get on a list and I’m doing that right there. And one day, somebody who had frequented the farmers market came to me and said, you know, something, I went to my local store, and you’re not going to believe this. They didn’t even carry your product. Of course, they didn’t like I wasn’t in any store. And I was immediately like, really? What store was that? Like, who do I need to go talk to? She tells me and she goes, but you know what? I told them that I wanted to order it. They went online and they place the order. And they told me they’d let me know when it’s in the store. And I was like, Well then how are they going? I’m thinking to myself, like how in the world are they going to get this? Right? So they never contacted me and never got in the store. But she kept going back and she said Finally she speaks to someone because at this point she’s furious that she keeps getting, you know, drug like this. And they told her that you know, not enough people are interested in this product for us to carry it. And so I was like, Well, I have a community and at this time we were at like a few 100 people, I was like, How many people do I need to send in the store to ask for this product for there to be enough interest, it wound up being under 30, I wind up getting a thing or reach out on my website, they contacted me. And I wound up getting in the local store that really set off getting into brick-and-mortar, big box retail stores. But it started there, from the experience of my community, going in and asking, why don’t you carry this product, I’d like to buy it.
Josh Hadley 45:26
Carlos, that is such an amazing example. I absolutely love that. I just love that throughout all the stories that you’ve shared, you just got this, like hustle grind, like, I’m gonna make stuff happen. mentality. And you know, I think our listeners, I hope you’ve paid attention to what Carlos has shared, and I would definitely recommend you go follow him on his podcast, he has so much knowledge to share. I’ve got a million ideas flowing through my mind right now, Carlos. So thank you for all of that. Now, as we wrap up, I love to leave the listeners with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Carlos here, the three takeaways that I noted, let me know if you think I’m missing anything. Number one, going to go back to the very first mistake and experience that you shared, which was that wholesale business $60 million. Sounds like you’re crushing it. But revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. And so my number one takeaway, an action item for all of you, is get really good at reviewing your books and understanding all the levers that drive profitability in your business. And if you’re not doing that, and if you don’t have a financial monthly review with your bookkeeper, you need to implement that ASAP. Because you can keep growing the business and thinking that you’re killing it, when in reality, sometimes you’re just funding and moving money around, and you’re losing money. So that’s action item number one, action item number two is going in with the recommendations that you had for The Founder’s Dilemma book, as well as the Slicing Pie book. I think that this is so crucial. So many people just jump into a business relationship, or it’s something new, just because it sounds good. And you’re not thinking what happens if this business does start to crush it in five years. And what my recommendation here is, is get very clear with the roles and responsibilities before you partner with somebody. Make sure you have iron out what are my KPIs? What are your KPIs? What are you overseeing? What are what am I overseeing make sure there’s a clear delineation. In addition to that, I think one of the most important things that you can do is have an exit strategy already in place. So that you could say, hey, if this relationship doesn’t go the way we want it to, what are the options for us to for either of us to pull the ripcord and to exit on mutual terms where we’ve already gone in, and there’s not going to be any bad blood, so to speak. So that would be action item number two, action item number three would be to build a local community. I think this flies against everything that especially a lot of the e-commerce entrepreneurs are listening to is we’re all digital marketers. We’re thinking about Facebook groups, we’re thinking about all the things we can do online. One of the biggest difference makers would be actually implementing a physical in-person local meetup group. And you shared numerous examples of how powerful that can be. And I think you know, many of our listeners, imagine if you had 5000 local people that loved your niche and your products that you could like that is as powerful like you mentioned, 1000 people locally is as powerful as you know, maybe 50,000 5,000 people in a Facebook group. So Carlos, is there anything else that you would like as a takeaway?
Carlos Alvarez 48:51
Oh, that’s perfect.
Josh Hadley 48:53
Awesome. All right, Carlos. Well, let’s ask you my favorite three questions to ask every guest. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why? I mean,
Carlos Alvarez 49:01
it’s hard to do one, but I will. So picking one is going to be Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s how I approach private label. I can’t be in that blue ocean. I’m not going to launch something in a red ocean.
Josh Hadley 49:13
Yeah, that is a fantastic recommendation. Question number two, what’s your favorite productivity tool or software that you’ve been using, that you feel like is a game changer?
Carlos Alvarez 49:23
I’m gonna say Headspace. It’s doing as many businesses as I do and trying to keep my pedal to the metal and trying to also be world’s best husband and best dad. The transition between one to the other headspace coupled with a business journal is is allows me to switch hats. So that’s the number one thing in my life is I want to be a better dad. I want to be a bit yeah, that that helps me.
Josh Hadley 49:51
it’s all about that focus. And yeah, Headspace, a great way to kind of visualize and meditate and, you know, actually run realize and put the most important thing first and to help prioritize echoing everything you’ve talked about. Their final question here is who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?
Carlos Alvarez 50:14
I’m gonna say Jeff Cohen, Jeff Cohen used to be with Seller Labs. Now, now he’s working at Amazon came up there. Jeff, over the years, I’ve known him forever. We actually didn’t actually meet though I think, known each other personally for six years now. And just any opportunity that someone has to go speak to Jeff, I highly recommend doing it. It’s a wealth of information on the digital marketing side, the family, just the way his mind works, so I admire him more than I’d say, That’s my influencer in this space, if you will, like that’s my go to if I if I have an issue, I need to solve something: Jeff Cohen.
Josh Hadley 50:52
I love it. He is very well known. And I echo that as well. Now, Carlos, if people want to follow your journey, they want to learn more about you ask you further questions. Where can they find you?
Carlos Alvarez 51:04
Anywhere on social media? At Wizards of Ecom, we have a Telegram chat too, if you’re Do you want to talk Amazon or e-commerce to free telegram chat at wizardsofecom.com/chat. And most people don’t do this, but my phone number that you can actually use is 305-902-1283. I suggest texting or just calling. But if you text me we’ll probably jump on a call and it’s me answering there’s no automation anything like that. I’d love to hear your thoughts I call BS on some of the stuff I’m saying are telling me how you why you don’t think it’ll work. It’s all good.
Josh Hadley 51:33
I love that. Look at this. He’s giving you your his personal cell phone number dropping so much value today. Well, Carlos, thank you so much for your time, and I appreciate all the knowledge you’ve shared with us.
Carlos Alvarez 51:44
Thank you so much.
Outro 51:47
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