Latest / Built by Margin with Laurie Chen / The Power of Mindset and Strategy: Scaling an E-Commerce Brand with Sean Travis

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The Power of Mindset and Strategy: Scaling an E-Commerce Brand with Sean Travis · Built by Margin with Laurie Chen

• 0:04
  Welcome to Built by Margin, the podcast where strategy meets the spreadsheet. I'm your host, Laurie Chen, fractional CFO and tax strategist, here to help you make smarter financial decisions, build a profitable business, and keep more of what you earn. Let's dive into the numbers that actually move the needle. With over 14 years as a full-time firefighter paramedic, Sean Travis's journey has been marked by steadfast commitment to business operations and development. As the founder of Ecom for Heroes, he has honed skills in building, scaling, and consulting for both e-commerce and health and fitness brands. His mission aligns with delivering impactful business growth and fostering a culture of success and bring as many first responders with him as he builds, grows and scales to a level of great impact.
• 0:56
  Sean, welcome to the show. Sean, welcome to Built by Margin. You started Ecom for Heroes two Oh, boy. OK. Well, historically, I spent, you know, my entire adult life as a first responder.
• 1:14
  I was a firefighter paramedic with L.A. for just about 14 years. And it's an amazing job. It's, you know, something that's very hard to get. And I put a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into getting that job and growing through the ranks and learning it, but eventually hit a point of How would I say this? Burnout. A couple of pain points. I lost a few buddies in the same year. I was dealing with a back injury that they wanted to operate on and kind of had to take a gut check. Is this something I want to keep doing? And at the time, my wife and I had been building out our own e-commerce brands.
• 1:53
  Now, luckily for us, they had grown to a healthy revenue. So it was something where I could essentially get rid of the golden handcuffs, like we like to call our W-2 jobs, and possibly pursue full-time. So I did what's called a leave of absence, and they allow us to do it at bigger departments where you're not leaving your job, but you essentially take a sabbatical, right? And you maintain your job and your employment without getting paid, you're not going to work, whatever. When I took that leave of absence, that's when I took the gut check of, is this really what I want to be doing? Maybe I doubled down into business creation, which is something that I felt very, very called to, and essentially never looked back. So that was a tough decision to make, and one I don't recommend all the time, unless you know the journey that you're going on. But when I did leave, That's when the conversation started. So I don't think I ever wanted to intentionally build a business that would be coaching, consulting for others. This is just kind of what happened organically. Guys started reaching out. You know, no one really leaves that job. It's typically a career job. It's something you do for 30 years. You get a lifetime pension, you get the best benefits in the world. It's a tough one to walk away from. And so, of course, the conversations start and guys start reaching out, you know, hey, man, what happened? Where'd you go? And then, of course, the rumor mill, which happens, I'm sure, in every industry.
• 3:27
  But, you know, the rumor mill comes around and Started sharing like, dude, I heard you got fired. Heard you, you know, went and started a surf camp in Costa Rica and opened a gym and, you know, just all these things that literally came out of nowhere. And then, of course, you know, the truth would come out and guys would say, well, shoot, man, how'd you do it? And then my next question was, well, can you teach me?
• 3:50
  And so then I started teaching other first responders and like-minded individuals, you know, so you have law enforcement, you got fire, paramedics, educators, nurses, etc.
• 4:02
  Essentially people that come from a very SOP-driven career, something where it's, you know, I know lock and step where I'm headed and there's no creativity about it, but I know how to follow directions. And that's what birthed Econ for Heroes. I realized that, one, I do enjoy teaching and coaching. I actually think it's one of my biggest passions, as cheesy as it is. You know, when you see the light go on in someone's eyes when they've learned something new and they're achieving it and they're succeeding at it. And then being able to also give other purpose outside of maybe that first career calling, right?
• 4:44
  We live in a very different age and time now where, you know, maybe a hundred years ago, you'd pick a career and really, really refine that and stay in it forever. And then maybe your child might follow in footstep and, you know, it'd be a family owned, whatever. Now we kind of have the option to iterate, adapt, you know, we could start one career, then start another, do them both in tandem, or maybe bounce around. Obviously, I don't suggest floundering, but I'm just saying we have the options to build multiple things, especially with the birth of AI and all this.
• 5:16
  And so that's when it really took off. I started teaching guys from my old department, very large, right? It's one of the biggest departments in the world. And then started getting referred and guys from other parts of the state and then parts of the country. And then we started the whole program. And so now we coach and teach not just first responders, but network marketers and essentially like-minded individuals. And what I mean by that is, There's a sense of grit that comes with building a business that if you've come from that kind of job or career, you already have, right? You understand delayed gratification. You understand, hey, I'm going to put a lot of work up front and I may not see the fruit of this harvest for a long time, which when building business, that's, you know, unless you strike gold, like that's essentially what you're hopping into. And as well as there's a sense of integrity and honor that comes with that kind of culture, self-responsibility. So yeah, it's been a journey. You know, we, we still own an operator on e-commerce brands.
• 6:21
  We're still launching others, but we also have, you know, we've worked with just over 120 clients now. We're growing with coaching and consulting. So it's been, yeah, it's been Wow, that's great. So it sounds like you took a pretty big risk in leaving your W2 job.
• 6:41
  And what was it that allowed you to take that risk, make that big leap of faith? What was it? Why were you so confident, even It's a good question. You know, pursuing something while also running from something. You familiar with the, there's that experiment with the rats in the maze trying to get to the cheese. Are you familiar with that If you put rats in a maze trying to get them through, it takes forever. If you put cheese at the end, they get there twice as fast or something like that. Then if you put a cat at the start of it, so something that might kill it, then they get there three times as fast. But then if you put the cat and the cheese together, essentially the pain point, what are you leaving or trying to evolve from into where you're trying to go, it was something like 20 times the speed. So by creating that incentive, but also figuring out what I don't want to be part of anymore, I think that was a major drive. So one, well, you know, I built a business with my wife. We built a couple of brands and, you know, built an agency. And while we're both working full time with other jobs, which is wild to think about, that was the that was the cheese, right? That was the cheese at the end of the maze. It's like, holy cow, like we can actually get something here. And then the pain point was, You know, literally watching, and I don't mean to go morbid here, but literally watching guys die around me, like friends of mine, whether it was from suicide or from on the job illness or fire. You know, so it got dark pretty quick. And I know it's a metaphor or feels metaphorical to say, you know, I work a job that could literally be my last day any day. But then that reality really hit. And I think that's when I took the ultimate gut check. Plus fighting back injuries, you know, and I'm. At the time, you know, in my mid-30s and I deemed myself, you know, one of the healthiest, more athletic individuals. I take care of myself and I'm sitting there arguing with the doctor about operating on my back and I'm like, what is going on? Right. This is not what I thought I signed up for. And and so, yeah, it was a little of both. And I think that's a healthy way if you're going to if you're going to make a massive, massive decision to alter the course of your life like that, you better have some very, very big reasons, right? You better know your whys and what you're leaving and what you're stepping into. So yeah, it was a journey and still processing it, right? In 2022 was when I retired and I still processed it.
• 9:25
  For about a year, year and a half after, my wife said I used to wake up with night terrors, which I had no idea. Right. You know, just things that are like your nervous system is getting rid of what I used to go through on a day and night basis. And, you know, still stepping into what it means to be a business owner every day, always What is one belief or mindset about yourself that It is the. getting over the imposter syndrome. So I am enough. I And if I don't know something, it's that I don't know it yet. And so what I mean by that, right, is, so compare it to my last career. In order to even apply, you had to go through and achieve these certain benchmarks, and then you were deemed enough.
• 10:25
  And your application would be whether it would be assessed and you would get accepted or denied. And I think I applied to something like 27 departments, right? You're just applying everywhere that you want to work. And then when you get hired, you get trained, and you have to pass these training benchmarks. And this training is given to you, right? It's literally like in step. You follow these SOPs directly. It's already been built for you. And then you pass the training, pass with flying colors, and now you're deemed enough.
• 10:56
  And then you go into a rookie or probationary year where you're being tested in the field. And you have to go through all these benchmarks again, where you get deemed that you are enough. And then of course, now you're low man on the totem pole and you got to prove your weight around and you got to prove that you're enough. And over and over and over again, for every rank that I went up, right? From firefighter to firefighter, paramedic to engineer, to about promoting the captain, all that stuff, right? Am I enough? One of the advantages to being in a system like that is that it's already laid out what enough is.
• 11:35
  If you can hit them, you are deemed enough. You are In business creation and building, and as generic as that sounds, there's not really any benchmarks. There's not a laid out plan. I highly suggest hiring a coach or getting part of a system or community where certain SOPs and plans have been put in place, but again, there's no guarantee. I might be able to follow these benchmarks in lockstep and order, and I may not be approved as enough as I was in my last job. So it's getting over that fear of imposter syndrome. I'm stepping into something that I've never done before and I don't really have a clear path laid out ahead of me. And so understanding that, that you entered into those knowing it's, look, I don't know what that journey looks like. It's not a promotional exam where I know what steps I need to take. It's I know I can achieve it, even though I don't know what the path is and I am enough. And there is no imposter syndrome because I will be the person that learns these things, or I will be the person that understands these things and grows through. And so definitely, definitely is, you know, as cheesy as it sounds is that believing in reminding myself daily that I am enough. And if I don't know something, it's that I don't know it yet. Or if I haven't grown to Yeah, I love how you talk about. the imposter syndrome, because whether we're an employee that just got promoted at our job or we're an entrepreneur leading a team of people, there's always imposter syndrome and that feeling of being enough, being good enough, doing enough. Right. And so I think we all resonate that, especially as founders and CEOs. So, yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite books of all time is Yeah. I, I personally believe, and I know the book talks a lot about how it applies to all areas of life, economic, um, uh, physical, spiritual, all sorts of realms, right? What are the three smallest daily behaviors that move 80% of results for you in your business and I would say all of it is around internal mindset. I think I get focused and it's easy to get focused on external validation or external results, meaning, you know, revenue or profit or whatever. Or, you know, is that project done? Or, you know, what's the next thing I need to handle or problem solve for a client? Those are externals. None of that works if my mind and heart and soul aren't aligned. And Not only that, I mean, I think it was Einstein and, you know, misquote me.
• 14:53
  That's all right. I'm sure Einstein gets misquoted all the time as being the originator, but you cannot. If it's something like you cannot find the solution with the same mindset, they gave you the problem. Like, you know, I'm sure I butchered that royally, but if I have the same mindset that existed when the problem was created, then there's no way I will be able to find the solution. I need to essentially get my mind in another status. One of you know, solution orientation, one of creativity, uh, one of synchronized with by creator, with imagination, with, you know, where's that, you know, that X factor going to come from. And if I'm in that fight or flight mode of trying to just problem solve, it's not going to come. But if I'm in that, you know, at ease rested, you know, essentially in my parasympathetic, my creative, then I know, That's when I get that inspiration. That's when I get that solution, that creativity that moves the needle, not just a little bit, but by miles. And so the small, I would say the three small things that I never miss are, one, I love, Dan Martell always says, exhaust the body, you tame the mind, especially if you got ADHD like the majority of us these days with the TikTok attention span. So I never miss a workout, whether it's taking my dog for a quick walk, you know, and by quick, I mean, I'm walking quickly, you know, for 30, 40 minutes to, you know, doing a CrossFit workout to whatever it is. I don't care. A healthy body means a healthy mind. And I mean, we go down that rabbit hole of biology and, you know, biomechanics all day long. How much, you know, muscle mass and moving your body and moving your muscle actually attributes to your brain function.
• 16:44
  So I never miss a workout, but more importantly is connecting with my creator and correcting with source or whatever you want to call it, right? Connect it with your, your insight. And so every morning, uh, we wake up, we wake up early, uh, you know, usually five, between five or six and sit down, never look at the phone, never look at anything. That's going to distract you from that sacred time in the morning. And we read, we meditate, we journal, We set intention for the day, right? We bring in gratitude and we set intention for the day so that I know my mindset is ready, right? I'm connected to whatever that is.
• 17:24
  Now, I may not be perfect, right? I may go through the day and accomplish one thing out of the 50 that I wanted, but at least I knew I approached it with the best version of myself that I possibly could have that day.
• 17:35
  And then lastly, so I got my workout, I got setting my mindset, and then the last one is breathwork. You know, I did it before even hopping on this call. I do it before transitioning into anything, really. If I'm not, you know, let's say I'm in computer mode and I've been, you know, working with building out my next AI tool or whatever it is, and I'm about to go lunch with, you know, a business partner or my wife or some friends, that's a transition of mindset and I need to recalibrate, and so I'll do breathwork. So I typically do four box breathing, four in, hold, four out, hold, just four rounds, nothing big. And the whole point is to reset, recalibrate, get rid of the old, That's awesome. Workout, mindset, breath work.
• 18:23
  So those are the three daily behaviors that are change your mindset and strategy and moving 80% of results for you. That's amazing. So working out, you mentioned that you don't miss a single workout. Like you That's amazing. Do you go to the gym or do you go out with your dog?
• 18:47
  I mean, but whatever. I mean, there's there's rainy days where, you know, you're not feeling it. You can barely keep your eyelids open, like at least do some stretches, like just never miss the honor to your body, like realize that your body is fighting every day, every night.
• 19:05
  to perform at its best for you and it needs its time. It needs you to respect it and to honor it, to be grateful for it. And so whatever it is, I set aside at least an hour a day to, and sometimes that's, you know, full disclosure, that's, you know, while I'm on a call or while I'm, you know, also attending a meeting or whatever, it's, you know, we can, we can dual task this one, not ideal all the time, but, um, Yeah, it's doing something to honor and respect the body because it's, I mean, it's been amazing and it will always be amazing to always do everything it Yeah, absolutely. A great strategy that I found that works with a lot of people that may just be starting out with working out is Put a treadmill under your desk. You can just, you know, walk a little while you're taking a meeting or doing some kind of shallow work, right? Checking emails or something like that. Um, I did that like right before I started going to the gym daily or almost daily. Um, and yeah, I tried that before my puppy started, um, chewing at the treadmill desk. Um, but I would really recommend the treadmill desk for people that are wanting to get, get into the, the Let's switch a little bit to thinking about financial growth and strategy. Do you work specifically with a CPA, a fractional CFO?
• 20:39
  Do you have someone that's guiding you, advising you in the finances Yeah, so we have a bookkeeper and CPA firm that we work with. We've kind of balanced between a few. So it is a common frustration. Obviously, if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. And we learn that the hard way. Meaning we've had definitely months where I thought I was profiting, and it turns out I was losing hand over fist. So just not tracking expenses or what we're prepared to spend on, whether it's ads or marketing or campaigns in the future, if you can't project that and can't forecast that, then you can't make decisions on the future. Yeah, getting a good bookkeeper is key and one that understands the type of business. Here's an example. One of the frustrations that I've run into with a few of our clients being first responders, whether it's fire, police, law enforcement, whatever, a lot of their CPAs or accountants or bookkeepers know that specific job market. they don't understand the tax code or bookkeeping, what it refers to business and real estate owners. And so a lot of it may look like hogwash to them. And they'll say, oh, no, you can't do that, or you can't deduct that, whatever that's, you know, whatever. And they're completely wrong. And so I'll talk with these clients and they're coming back to me saying like, oh my gosh, I got this and this and we didn't get anything back on taxes. And I'm sitting here pulling my hair out of my head because I know that CPA or that bookkeeper just did a horrible job with him. And so I always refer them to someone that I know that does understand that. But understanding, yeah, so I get weekly reports. Sometimes daily, depends on what we're doing with launch and management. But with our bookkeepers, they'll give us weekly reports on expenses, making sure they're analyzing, and then giving tips and tricks on, hey, this was a little high, or, hey, you should probably double down here based off your goals. So being lock and step there, it's not something that I enjoy doing. I don't enjoy going through numbers. Some people do. But I do not. And so that is definitely something that I delegate out so that I can make the best financial decisions. Because again, you know, cash flow is the lifeblood of every business. And if I'm not protecting that and growing it, then, you know, I'm not setting myself up for success. So As far as tracking cash flow, I'm glad you bring this up because this is a challenge in any company, whether we start up or multimillion dollar company is being able to see how financial visibility and cash flow into the future. Because like you said, cash flow is life of the business. You've got payroll to pay every two weeks, every month or whatever the cadence is. Right. It's a regular cycle. Cash flow forecasting, is that something that you're able to see on a weekly basis? Do Yeah. So, you know, our bookkeeper, we use QuickBooks and it's linked to all our payment accounts and, you know, our bank accounts and everything, every credit card or whatnot. And then I think what most of the work is the front end work is classifying, you know, what types of expenses go where. You know, if I go out to a lunch or something like that, is that a business or a personal expense? Is, you know, if I go on a trip for four days to New York, was that for personal pleasure or for business, right? Or maybe both, right? And you try to figure out how to navigate all that. Now, on top of expenses, is the cash flow coming in? So as your revenue grows or stagnates or possibly drops, understanding what that's going to do for the next 1, 3, 6, and 12 months is very, very key. Just because you have maybe a revenue down month doesn't mean you need to kill your business. It just means you might need to tighten up some expenses. And thus, that weekly report, our bookkeeper will tell us, hey, You know, you guys are down some right now. So go ahead and tighten up. And here's where we see you're overspending. You know, you don't need to overspend here and here and here. Like double check that, you know, maybe don't eat out as much. Right. That's the simple one. Or, you know, maybe easy on the client entertainment, whatever.
• 24:55
  You know, there's there's hard expenses, you know, the fixed expenses, which are, you know, your operationals and then your soft expenses or your Nice to have, right? You don't need to take a client to the Rams game, but you do need to make sure their ad team is paid, you know, so very, very different. So, yeah, just doubling down on what the necessary is to then allow for growth, right? You had that down month and then because you contracted a little bit, now you can have your up months again. Otherwise, you're just paying Yeah, absolutely. I think having that forward looking visibility is critical. And like you pointed out, you know, even if you have a down month in revenue, it doesn't mean you have to necessarily be laying off employees, cutting expenses. You just need to kind of rearrange and reshuffle and know what's coming in next month. Um, so yeah, all the, all the clients that I work with, um, we do some kind of cash for looking cashflow projection and it's critical because, you know, if you're working with a very large company and they have a lot of payables, then you really have to make sure that you have the money in the bank to, to pay it immediately so that you don't become insolvent. So it's huge, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about revenue model pricing and packaging. How do you think about how to structure revenue across your clients? Do you do retainers? Do you do hourly? How did you figure out what's the best way to price your services with Yeah, so for our, we have essentially two main pricing models and I guess actually technically three. So we have an agency side where we work with existing e-commerce brands and that's, you know, they're already up and running and they just want us to build something out, optimize, run ads, whatever it is. Typically it'll be D2C brands that are moving on to Amazon because we have a lot of our expertise on Amazon, but we do encapsulate both. So that's one revenue and that's a, and okay, so this, I've argued a ton with colleagues in the industry about this. We don't sign anyone on for long-term contracts. And the reason being is, and maybe this is just symptom of being from a service career. If you don't wanna continue working with us, I'm not, we're gonna make you, but that means I'm not doing my job well enough. So I lock everyone into a monthly contract, that's it. and I have yet to have people cancel or get frustrated with it, right? So we have that. We have a couple tiers there, depending on how much they want us to handle for them. Then we have our coaching. So that's the consulting agency. Then we have our coaching. And our coaching, you know, for first responders, network marketers, and so on that want to build their own brand. Not only do they want to build it, they want to learn how to do it so they can rinse and repeat. So not only are we working hand in hand with them to do this, We're also teaching them the skills so that they can rinse repeat with or without us. And so that's a 12 month program, but again, on a month to month contract. So if they rush through and they get through it in six months, good for them. And they're like, hey, man, I'm out. It is what it is. But. Every single one of them stays on for 12 months. And then after that, we have a prorated. If they want to continue with some of our services and platforms that we provide as part of that program, we have a much reduced prorated retainer. So we typically charge monthly retainer. Reason being is there's a couple of reasons we do the retainer versus what's the term for the other? You pay up front versus after the month. is initially I would say accounts receivable was one of the most biggest pains in the ass ever. It's right, you would do something for a client, they're happy and they're running off and doing whatever, and now you gotta go chase them down for payment and make sure they complete their invoice. That was infuriating. And not only that, I already paid you know, my team. And so now I gotta, now I'm like backtracking to try to like make up for that expense. And now I'm chasing on invoices. So we switched the retainer model and of course, right, if Our work sucks, which it doesn't, but if it does and you're not happy, then we refund. But how many refunds do you think we've gotten? Right?
• 29:23
  None. So point is, is we haven't paid up front, we complete the work, we go on the month-to-month contract, and everyone's happy. And so everyone gets to choose. The thing I like about this is that we get to continue to choose to work together every month. And on the other end, it also protects us. So back to the 80-20 rule, it's more like 95-5 on this one is your most frustrating 5% of your clients probably cause 95% of your issues. And so if I have a very, very frustrating client that is not following the suggestions or not following the guide or not following the SOPs and then just complaining to me, that is no fun. And that's not what I want to spend my time doing, answering 15 of their emails every day, just because they don't want to watch a 12 minute video or whatever it is.
• 30:17
  And so it also gives me the option to be like, Hey bud, I don't know if this is a fit or not in any six-month, 12-month contract. So I'm going to go ahead and part ways with you here. However, I'm not going to leave you floundering. So here is 15 other resources for you to reach out to. I will give you glowing referrals, like all that good stuff. But yeah, I really like that business model that's worked for us so far. And it creates healthy relationships too, right? Versus just getting locked into something, which I've been locked into stuff, which is so infuriating. I remember we had an ad agency for one of our brands, and we met them at a conference. They came highly referred, friends of friends. It was all the good stuff, right? The devil's always your best friend. And they charged us some egregious retainer and had us sign a 12-month contract. And then six months in, we had done nothing but lose money with them. And we reported that and we had also tons of miscommunications. We had tons of dropped items and projects that we were waiting on that they said they were going to complete. So essentially, they just were not living up to their end of the contract. And so we said, hey, we need to stop service. This is not working. And they came back and be like, hey, that's totally fine. And then literally replied with an email being like, how do you want to submit the rest of your contract payment? So they wanted us to pay them out five more months for work that they were never going to do. We didn't want them to do so. That was just a headache in itself. You know, obviously we were able to get out of that. We presented all of our case points. We had recordings. We had, you know, we had proof, but it was just such a headache. It was unbelievable. And we had to go through, take days of our time to essentially prove why this ad agency wasn't performing and why not only that, they were breaking their terms of their own con. It was just, it was aggressive. And I never want to put a client on that side of that bargain. I know I'm not going to be able to make everyone happy. I will darn try my best to do what I know to be the best version of whatever our business is. But if that client isn't happy, I don't want them to have to go through 15 different hoops just to get out of something. I want every relationship that I meet, ideally, and this obviously isn't perfect, but I want people to leave better off than they found us. And locking someone into some long term contract just frustrates the hell out of me. Now, I get I do get with ad agencies and stuff like that. It takes generally about three plus months to even see any movement. So I do understand that. So maybe saying, hey, first three months were locked in. And then after that, it's month to month or whatever works. But And then just be open with the client about that, right? Say like, hey, it's going to take three, four or five months for us to even see the back end of this. Like, especially if you're an SEO agency, like, dear God, like, you know, talk to me in three years kind of thing, but. At least be open and communicate about that, because otherwise this whole contractual locked in crap, it's yeah, it's grimy Yeah, I totally agree with that business model. Most of my clients are on monthly retainer or do month-to-month, but it's typically, you know, it's a multi-year relationship, but, you know, they're not obligated to be in a multi-year relationship. And so I found that that works really well for my model. It changes depending on if I'm working with a startup. They have very different needs. They have cashflow limitations. They're trying to raise funding. And so in that way, I might charge an hourly rate. But if it comes to like multi-million dollar company, I'm on a monthly retainer with them on a month-to-month contract.
• 34:07
  They're not locked in for six months. They're not locked in for a year. It's kind of a two-way street where we kind of evaluate, is this working?
• 34:15
  Is this working relationship successful? Am I getting the results that you hired me for? Do we work well together? And so I like having that month-to-month model because we're able to, first of all, deliver the value to them, but also at the same time figure out, do we actually work well enough together to continue this partnership? So I totally resonate with what you said in terms of how you look at your pricing model and how you relate with your customers in that way. Now, you mentioned that you're building out the next AI tool or working on that. How does AI change how you think about your business and how you run your business? What are some ways that AI has helped you grow Oh, man. All right. How long do we have? Let's go.
• 35:04
  Yeah. So I just went through a conversation. I think I just made a post about this today. Yeah. Where to start with that? I mean, A.I. is not coming after your job. That's like this whole ridiculous like it's replacing everyone's jobs is so frustrating to me. It just ignores history. So let's take let's go history lesson real quick. So do you know where the term computer came from? It was the job description for people that were sitting in a room with a pencil and a paper computing data and equations. One of the famous ones was getting a man on the moon. We did most of that with handwritten calculations. The job description for that person was literally a computer. You would have these think tanks of rooms of literally 20, 30, 40 people just running through equations like, hey, I need to figure out what the vector is to and what speed I need to get to in order to break Earth's gravity. Unfathomable how many equations need to be calculated and computed in order to do that. Then IBM came out with a machine. and they named it a computer because what it did was all those calculations in a tenth the speed with ultimate accuracy. It wasn't perfect at first, right? It still had to be double checked with human computers, but ultimately no one's doing handwritten computations for rocket launches anymore. We're using computers. Now that room full of, let's just call it 40, 50 people no longer had a job. But does that mean less jobs happen? It's like, no, literally thousands, if not millions of jobs were created with the use of computer. Because what ended up happening is we went down the road of, we can get to a solution quicker and thus we can get to the next problem quicker. So that momentum, 10X, 100X, million X, same thing's happening with AI. AI is just hitting us in the face a lot faster than I think we're accustomed to, especially with social media and everything in our face right now, is we hear every story everywhere at all times. But really, really what's important is how can we use AI to essentially be the next computer in our business, right? How can we take the task that may take 10 people's time and turn it into just one? And the way we do that is we take AI, and one of my favorite tools is called Repl.it. Google just came out with their own version, but vibe coding. And vibe coding, what that is, where you can literally talk to it. You don't have to understand JavaScript or HTML or any of the codes. just talk with it and it will code you different tools. It will build you the tool, then show you what it looks like, and then you can go back and forth and problem solve with it just by talking with it.
• 37:53
  And then it will put it up on a URL and say, all right, go ahead, have at it. And now you have a tool that can help optimize whatever it is that you're doing in your business. I don't care if you're a firefighter, paramedic, or a CPA, or a doctor. Literally, the data analytics are there to help you with your career, with your job, with whatever it is. So finding those pain points, right? What are the things that, for me personally, or in our job, or in our consulting, or our creations, what are the pain points that we're visiting regularly? Like, what are tasks that, man, this takes three hours or three days to complete? Maybe I could just create an AI agent to go through all that. If I feed it the correct prompt, right? AI is all about how you prompt it. It's the same thing in life. You only get the answers to the questions you ask. So same thing with AI, right? Am I prompting it correctly? And then you go and you build that tool, whatever it is. So a couple of things that I've built in length, I've been about 10 months in so far, is majority of our clients are trying to figure out either their first product or next product to sell. So we're all about creating something of value. We don't white label, we don't do arbitrage, we don't do wholesale or drop shipping, none of that. We build what's called private label brands, which is essentially you're creating a new market or a new product for a market under a trademark brand name so that you can grow that brand. Well, in order to figure out that product, there is millions of data points that we need to analyze. And the tools have been getting better and better over the years, but we still have to analyze them.
• 39:33
  Well, now I've created an AI product discovery dashboard that analyzes all that for me. And it actually pulls in from other resources that I didn't even have the time to analyze or that the other tools couldn't touch. For example, like Reddit forums, or TikTok trends, or the meta ad trends, or like different libraries and whatnot of where things are going, what people like about those products, and then most importantly, what don't they like so that you know what to fix.
• 39:59
  And that is a process that used to take us months that I can now pretty much accomplish within three or four days. So now what? Well, now, instead of spending months on a product discovery, I can attribute that to now. What's our launch process going to look like? Right. I can delegate my employees that we're working on that to not only use that tool, but then go to the next level. What's what's the next level? What's the next level of creation? Well, how do we get ads and marketing? you know, exponential. Where it used to cost us hundreds or thousands of dollars to get new ad videos and ad photos created, we can now do that for pennies on the dollar with AI. Okay, well then now what? Well now let's create a new strategy, right? So it allows that momentum to go literally 100x. And it's one of the things that I'm talking about regularly with friends of mine whether they're in, like I have a good buddy who's a financial planner, CFP with a very, very big bank, right?
• 40:57
  He's got billions under management. Awesome. And I asked him, I go, what are you guys using AI for? And he goes, nothing. And like my jaw dropped and, you know, hey, he and I, we golf a lot together. And so I was like, well, can I show you some things? Like, obviously you know, don't throw AI into the middle of a bunch of, you know, confidential information, but what can it help you analyze with the market or with this or with that? What are a lot of the common questions or pain points you ask? And so he starts discussing with me, you know, some of the tangential markets that he's researching. And I go, well, have you built a tool or even ask the existing LLMs about this? And he goes, no. And so I just literally during a round of golf, I just showed him how to do it. And he's built like three tool sets It doesn't matter on your job or position. And then I have other guys that a lot of my clients are still operating first responders, a lot of firemen, a lot of medics, a lot of law enforcement. In that career, an old cap in mind used to say that every single call is a series of mistakes that we're constantly fixing. Meaning you show up to a 9-1-1 call, you have no idea what's going on. They might say it's a belly pain when you show up and the guy has three gunshot wounds. Like, what the heck? So you have to assess, iterate, and treat accordingly. We have SOPs that we follow. We get the person.
• 42:15
  Obviously, you don't treat it for a belly pain. You now then obviously got to assess for the gunshot wounds, of course. And you go through your whole treatment protocol, you know, in a trauma case like that, you want them up and running within under 10 minutes in an ambulance, get into the hospital, you're treating, you're doing your whole thing, et cetera, you step back. Now, every big call has what's called an after action plan or an after action report, an AAR. And that's where we would talk, we'd assess, we'd be like, what went right, what went wrong, et cetera. Start plugging that into an AI. Like create your own AI agent that's learning your career, that's learning you, because it all gets memory. And now you ask like, hey, I just had this call. Like, did I run that 100% correctly? Like, I always want to be the best version of whatever. Well, you know, when someone calls 901, you're the best they got. No one else is showing up. So whatever you can do, you can do. And so how do I optimize this? It's like, man, I really didn't know how to assess this one little piece, this thing that I saw that was weird. Like, we never got trained on that. Ask the AI and watch what happens. It starts optimizing your treatment protocols and optimizing how the next patient that you see or the next person you help. The tools are endless. When it comes to how we're using AI, it's how are we not? Essentially, can you implement it in every piece? The answer is yes. Just like where a computer is part of everything now, You know, you can't hop on a fire engine without a computer, which gets you the call, which tells you where you're going and what the 911 caller said. And then you get there and you're mapping in, you know, integrating all the call features of what's going on. You're writing down the contact info and the scene and everything like that. That's all on computers now. So we obviously use computers everywhere. What do you think is going to happen with AI? So yeah, we're implementing it everywhere, whether it's product discovery, ads, marketing, writing copy, responding to clients. I might be tired towards the end of the day, and a client sends me a really intricate email that they're super stressed out about. And I may be operating at 60%, 70% mental capacity because I've made about 342 decisions already. So I may not be the best responder right there. But if I've trained an AI on a master prompt that understands my business, has every knowledge input from my business, and I took the time to do that, I can actually funnel that question through that AI. It will funnel out a response. And then instead of having to use all of my brainpower to come up with the best solution, I could just review what the AI said, maybe edit it a little bit better. and then send it off to the client. Now they got the best version of myself that I trained the AI bot on, and they got the iteration that I just gave it. So, yeah, we can talk on this all day. And I know there's even ways to automate that. I mean, like, so I don't even need to see the email. Granted, I still like being hands-on, but, yeah.
• 45:03
  That's great. If you had to choose one AI agent, would it be ChatGBT, Claude, Ooh, great question. So a little bit of a mix. I actually think Google, Gemini, is leading with a lot of the analytics, especially with the content creation. I know OpenAI and ChadGBT are doing great, but I do know that they went from, even though their business name is OpenAI, they're actually closed source now. So they went from OpenAI, you know, that was Elon Musk's vision when he financed the company and built it and did the whole thing, Then they went into a profit model when he left, and now they're closing their best tech. So you actually hear a lot of people with the most recent chat GBT updates are very frustrated with it. That doesn't mean it's not operating well. It's not doing well. But there's Grok, there's Gemini, which is Google. There's Claude. I mean, there's a few others. Perplexity, which is a whole, you know.
• 46:04
  Oh my God, web browser system that connects with everything. The thing I love about Google is one, it's all with every single version that comes out. It's either the top or one of the top, barely. So it's always at the precipice.
• 46:19
  And then I'm saying this fully, by the way, having used ChatGBT and Grok and Claude a ton. So I'm leaning into Gemini right now. I'm actually making that shift. The other thing is I use Google Chrome. I use Google. I use Google email. That's what my whole business is built off. I use Google Drive. I use all those features. Guess what Gemini does? It integrates into all that. So if you give it access, it now just learned everything it needs to know about you, your business, your communications, like that. So I don't even need to tell it anything. I could actually ask it questions. Hey, what do you need to know about my business that may not be apparent already? Like, how can you help me answer these questions? How can you help me build out this content creation? And then we're obviously in a lot of content with building out ads or posts or whatever. Then you have the image creator called NanoBanana, which I love the names that come out with these AI tools, hilarious. But NanoBanana has been the most recent, which is creating images. And I know each LLM has their own version, but NanoBanana has been phenomenal, as well as their video creator with Veo or Flow, which are two different versions, but both on the Gemini platform. So for that, Gemini Pro, maybe don't go ultra unless you're an agency trying to create trillions of data points, but Gemini Pro I think is like 20 or 30 bucks a month and you get access to literally everything that I just shared, plus things that I don't even know about. In addition to that, they just created their own vibe coding, much like Repl.it or Lovable or Codex. There's a few versions, but if I just want to talk to it and create tools, what if I'm using Google's vibe coding that already understands my business, that already understands how I talk and how I speak, already has my thousands of email messages in its memory bank because I allowed it access, already had access to my whole drive, my whole business, and I say, hey, Google, what's a good tool that I should build? And then I start vibe coding with Google like that. That's where this goes. So integrating it all in. So yeah, lately, Google Gemini. And that's essentially what I tell people is, if you're going to pick one, Pick one that integrates the most with your life. Now, you can connect Google and your drives and all that stuff to the others, but it's not as integrated as Gemini is.
• 48:36
  And I think in the near future, whether it's, I mean, I feel like everything we say is gonna take five years, it takes three months, but in the near future, we're gonna see Google and Gemini start to become the lead because they have the most data history out of all of them, right?
• 48:53
  They've been in existence since, what, 98? I don't know, making that up. They have search history and market history and all that from the beginning of computation. So Great, yeah, thanks for sharing. I'm definitely going to have to check out Gemini Pro. I extensively use ChatGPT, heard good things about Cloud, but I have not used Gemini Pro yet. So based on your recommendations, I would recommend everyone go check that out, especially if you use Google a lot, which I do.
• 49:27
  So that's a great recommendation. This has been really fascinating. Thank you so much for joining Built by Margin. We've talked AI, we've talked financial strategy, we've talked your founder story, taking the risks. So this has been a very comprehensive, very fascinating discussion.
• 49:50
  Oh yeah, ecomforheroes.com, 1M for whatever reason we chose to go with 1M, not 2, but or at ecomforheroes on Instagram, TikTok. I would say Instagram is probably our most communicated, you know, um, so yeah, either there or, uh, yeah, just reach out, uh, always happy. And then if anyone's interested in that product discovery tool, just send me the direct words, say build, and I'll share some prompts and stuff. And, Awesome. Well, we'll definitely add everything into the show notes so that people can connect with you and e-com for heroes. Sean, thank you so much for being here and sharing your expertise and your experience. And thank you everyone for tuning in to another episode of Built by Margin.
• 50:37
  Don't forget to subscribe and share and until next time. Thanks for tuning in to Built by Margin. If you're ready to turn insights into income, subscribe and join me each week as we break down the numbers behind smart business growth. I'm