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Eric Wulterkens – Kings Ridge Media
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Adventures, the business program that brings
you the struggle
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stories and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
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Today, we are welcoming/preparing
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to learn from Eric Wulterkens,
president, owner,
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founder of Kings Ridge Media. Eric,
how are you doing today?
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I’m doing wonderful.
How are you doing?
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I’m doing very well.
I’m excited because, Eric,
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I know your main gig is to help
people sell stuff on Amazon.
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Is that right?
Pretty much, yes,
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I’m also a seller on Amazon myself,
but it’s really turned towards
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aiding other sellers
and building their businesses.
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Sure.
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So an interesting thing happened this year
where it seems like everybody stopped
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going places and they just
ordered stuff online.
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Sometimes when I look at my front porch,
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I believe that my wife is slowly
keeping Amazon in business.
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But I look at other front porches and I
feel like, oh, I guess she’s not alone.
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So apparently there’s something to do,
something powerful with that platform.
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So let’s just start with.
Yeah.
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Let’s start with how you got
started in this whole game.
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Well, I started about 13 years ago.
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It basically kind of to give
the short, short version of it.
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A friend of mine
if anybody out there remembers when there
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used to be used CD stores and music
stores out there my a friend of mine
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approached me and said,
we should really start one of these.
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He’s like, I’ve seen what the one
in our local area was doing in sales.
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And he says, it’s phenomenal,
blah, blah, blah.
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So we kind of started down the road
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of looking at starting one of these
stores and we got into it.
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We ended up going to a franchisor.
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We went through the meeting of sitting
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there talking to him about
starting one of these stores and
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a couple months into it,
in the planning process of it,
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I realized that while
my friend was a very would be a very good
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employee for the store,
that if we were going to really start
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this, it was going to be
all on my shoulders.
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I was probably twenty four at the time and
spending the hundreds and hundreds
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of thousands of dollars it would
have cost to just start
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this store was overwhelming to me and I
eventually said, I don’t want to do this.
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And we had accrued a lot of inventory
to start the store at that point in time.
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And he said, well, when am I going
to do with all this stuff I bought?
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So initially I went to him and I said,
well, why don’t we sell it online?
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He had no interest in that.
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So then I ended up just buying all
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the inventory from him,
and that’s kind of what started it all.
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Wow.
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So are we talking
old TVs and stuff like that?
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No, it was just media.
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It’s just books and books and CDs.
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OK, so there’s still probably a space
issue of some kind, right? Yeah.
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Anyway, when I say it was a lot,
it really wasn’t a lot.
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I mean we had just begun that process.
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So I mean a month in,
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I mean there was thousands of items.
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There was not thousands
upon thousands of items.
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All right.
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And you acquire these one by one or
pallets at a time or? It was
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mostly what it was,
was just buying like big lots,
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finding a person that was just trying
to offload their entire collection.
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And we would just buy that collection up
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going to I mean,
literally going to rummage sales and
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buying the entire everything they
had at a rummage sale for. Wow.
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Beat they love seeing you.
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Get my weekend back.
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So. So so your initial plan was to set up
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a brick and mortar retail store,
just reselling stuff.
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Right.
All right.
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All right.
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And you figured, I guess,
what area was this in? Was this Appleton?
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Yeah, it was up in Appleton.
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OK. Where we were going to do it.
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So it would have been in direct
competition with the place.
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We were seeing how much they were doing
because they were also in Appleton.
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So.
All right.
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And they were selling stuff as well.
Yeah.
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Yeah.
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OK, it would have been pretty
much the same type of store.
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Interesting.
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So so just side note, are,
is that business still in business?
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No, that business probably
went out maybe two years ago.
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OK, so.
Alright.
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So from retirement or from the whole
brick and mortar thing?
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Honestly, I don’t know.
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I would assume, I would assume that it was
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just time, you know,
the market had shrunk that much.
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All right.
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That it just wasn’t
worth having it anymore.
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Interesting.
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So that long ago,
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eBay was probably a big thing back then.
Right?
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Right.
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And honestly, I, I
messed around with eBay a lot.
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I never have had a lot
of success with eBay.
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When I first started,
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we started on a website called Half.com,
which is no longer in existence now,
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but it was actually owned
by eBay at the time.
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And Half.com was basically eBay’s version
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of a store that only sold
CDs, DVDs and books.
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And that’s what we are focused in.
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So we just put everything on Half.com
and started there.
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And then a few years into it,
Amazon kind of came onto the scene. Amazon
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was always there,
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but it really came on the scene and and I
said and somebody had told me that if
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if you’re doing books,
you should really be looking to Amazon.
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So then I looked in Amazon,
started selling books on Amazon,
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and then pretty much everything
moved over to Amazon.
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Oh, that’s awesome. So at what
point, how long ago are we talking?
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2005.
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OK. So probably a year and a half into it
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was when Amazon really became like,
OK, this is where we need to be.
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All right.
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Oh, so 15 years ago you got
in the Amazon trade. Yep.
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So I would say that’s
that’s some strong foresight.
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So you’ve probably seen them change
quite a bit over the past 15 years.
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Yogya, big time.
Big time.
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And and in fact, I like a lot of people
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will ask me when they say when they hear
that I focus mainly in books,
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in the media, they’re like,
why are you in that space?
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Like, it’s such a dead space.
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And and the reason why I’m in it is
because back 15 years ago
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when you wanted to sell on Amazon,
that’s the only thing you could sell.
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They had opened up their
marketplace to any other items.
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So so I started in what they were doing.
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And I’ve never I’ve played
around with leaving that.
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Category one, never enough to the margins
in books are so much greater than what you
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find in the other categories, that it just
never made sense to me to make the jump.
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Nine So.
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So 15 years.
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You’re 20 mid 20s.
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So how does it feel?
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Well, let me back up a step.
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When you had this inventory and you
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decided to sell, it was the idea that I’m
just going to sell this stuff and get
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a job, or is the idea that I’m going
to sell this stuff and use it
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for a launching point to launch my own
business without this other clown?
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So, yeah, I guess I would
say that it never really
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never really crossed my mind
that it would turn into a business.
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It really didn’t.
I
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had all this stuff and I said,
I’ll buy from you.
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And I was just going to start selling it.
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And
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I was actually very slow
on taking that leap where I became
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a business where I would consider it,
especially going full time business.
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Like I literally got to the point where
I realized that if I was wanted to ever
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sleep again, I had to either give up
the business or had to give up the job.
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Oh, funny.
So I if anybody were to ask me,
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I would tell them that I waited
way too long to make that leap.
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All right.
So.
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All right.
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And what were you doing
for a day job at the time?
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I worked for a company that we
I, I didn’t work for Cisco.
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And when I say Cisco,
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the computer company,
not the food company, because it’s OK.
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Most common thing I’ve ever heard,
the big Cisco, but really big Cisco.
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Yeah, but I was working for another
company that had a contract with them
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and we were we worked on renewing these
big elaborate agreements they have
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with their clients for all
their networking equipment.
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Gotcha.
All right.
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So that was probably pretty
lucrative at the time to write.
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It was all right, OK.
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It was for my age.
It was.
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I did pretty well with it.
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OK, but but not by no means like,
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was it a job you wanted to do
for the next 30 years of your life?
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Put it all right.
All right.
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That’s fair.
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I just want to pause for a second.
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Is there a beeping on your end?
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No, no.
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I keep hearing this beeping every
10 seconds or something like that.
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Yeah, just went.
Hold on here.
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Hold on.
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Give me one second.
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Did you hear it again?
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Yeah, oh, yeah, that’s the guy
downstairs scanning books.
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Oh, really?
Yeah.
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I don’t know how many.
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It makes a noise.
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Yeah, the scanner makes a little beep when
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I don’t really, but I can’t
imagine that it’s picking it up.
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Yeah, it’s all right.
It’s all right.
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It’s OK.
OK.
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It’s like some like it’s
recording kind of thing.
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Whatever.
It doesn’t matter.
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Doesn’t matter.
We’ll cut that out.
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OK, so you had this inventory.
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Were you just in an apartment at the time?
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Yeah, well, OK.
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So I was in the military,
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so I had a duplex that I owned,
but I was pretty compartmentalized.
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OK, so so I bought a duplex
when I was in the military.
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So when I had it came home,
I had a house to live in.
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But it was it was a very small duplex.
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So it was pretty much apartment sized,
but it did have a good size basement.
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All right.
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That was where everything was
stored at that point in time.
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Very cool.
Very cool.
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So you’re selling stuff just individually,
online and half.com.
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When did the moment come where
you’re like, you know what?
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Maybe I should quit my job and actually
make a business out of this?
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So that was two thousand ten.
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OK, I can see it was quite a ways.
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And you’re talking five years.
Yeah.
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And
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it was basically my wedding present
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to myself once I got married and I said,
this is it, this is it.
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When after we’re married, man, I’m quit
my job and we’re seeing where this goes.
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So did your did your new bride know that?
Yes.
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Yes.
OK, this was discussed.
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Yes.
Like a funny story.
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A job.
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Nice.
Oh, she was she cool with it or was she
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like, let’s just see how this
goes or what was her reaction.
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Yeah.
Yeah.
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Like I the one thing I can say about
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my wife,
my girlfriend at that point in time was
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she has always been my biggest fan,
my biggest supporter.
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All right.
So so when I sat down and said I think I
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think we should do I can do this
and I think I can make it work.
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She was just like as long as you think you
can make it work, I support you in it.
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So.
All right.
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So very cool.
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Very cool.
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So is she now working with you or is
she’s got her own thing going on.
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She is a photographer, OK?
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She does do stuff with me.
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She helps me a lot.
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But but yeah.
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And but she’s also grown up and started
her own company very much in its infancy.
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So very cool.
Very cool.
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So you got your own gig,
you got married then I imagine you’re
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thinking I got to get more stuff
so I can sell more stuff, right?
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Yep.
Yeah.
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And that was
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I didn’t really have to.
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So at that point we had grown obviously
past that original inventory.
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At that point in time
we were going out to.
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Thrift stores all over the state,
we’ve been at a point in time and I should
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preclude that at a certain point in time,
I don’t remember exactly where it was.
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My brother came in and became
a partner in this.
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Oh, nice.
OK.
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He has since left and now it’s
my business again, all alone.
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But that’s why I say we because
it was him going doing this.
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And
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so we would travel around the country
working on different things
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to different stores all over,
all over pretty much the Midwest.
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We went anywhere from starting
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in Wisconsin all the way down to Chicago,
out to Ohio as far wow.
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At point in time.
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And so we did that for several years.
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And once we kind of hit a wall because
Amazon changed a bunch of policies
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and overnight,
pretty much all the inventory we were
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selling just became unprofitable
because of the fees that they hiked up.
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Oh, we were playing a game where we were
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living with very low margin,
selling a lot of items.
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And overnight with these fee changes,
it just pretty much went away.
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Wow.
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So you’re talking about just a gross
volume of product that you’re pushing?
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Yeah.
I mean, it’s still probably fairly time
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consuming to deal with the
ordering thing, posting it.
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And then once you get the order, you get a
package to ship it out and all that jazz.
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Yeah.
And
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Amazon does have a program which we were
at that point in time and still today are
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using very heavily where I just ship it
into Amazon’s warehouse and they when
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the customer purchases
that they trip to the customer.
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All right.
Which you’ve made it way more streamlined
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and a lot easier because we didn’t
have to have the warehouse space.
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We didn’t have to.
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Worry about picking certain orders
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by a deadline,
just as we could get the orders out
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the door to Amazon from there,
they just took care of it all for us.
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Interesting.
So what changed with Amazon fees that you
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got over that hurdle,
I guess, and still kept selling them?
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So
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after that happened,
that was when my brother.
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So after that happened,
we were very bitter about it
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and sold for for about
six to eight months.
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We started trying to create
like a wholesale business.
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All right.
Similar to what I’m doing now.
[00:15:02]
But but it didn’t work as well.
[00:15:05]
It wasn’t nearly as successful as
the one that I’ve got going now.
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But but we started doing a wholesale
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business and we just
dropped Amazon completely.
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All right.
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And we did that for about
six to eight months.
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Once we realized that that wasn’t going
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to be that effective,
then I that’s when he bailed out.
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And then I was sitting there thinking, OK,
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what’s the next step,
what do I want to do?
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And I looked at it and I said, OK,
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the problems where we had before
with Amazon was the margin thing.
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So,
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yeah, I devised a plan where I was like,
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OK, I’m only going to sell things
that have this huge margin on.
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All right.
So and that’s what I started doing.
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And I have dropped that margin
down considerably now since then.
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But
but it’s still triple the margin that we
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were looking at back
before this all happened.
[00:16:06]
Gotcha.
Yeah.
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Jeff Bezos is famous for saying
your margin is my opportunity.
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It’s going to undercut you
until you’re bleeding.
[00:16:16]
Yeah, I guess.
Why?
[00:16:17]
If you sell on Amazon, never,
never try to compete with Amazon.
[00:16:22]
All right.
[00:16:22]
Try to exist in a place where they don’t
exist because all of products on Amazon
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that Amazon themselves do not have
any they’re not selling at all.
[00:16:34]
And where you got that’s where you that’s
where you find these great gaping margins
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is in those products that it’s only
third party sellers selling them.
[00:16:43]
It’s not OK.
[00:16:45]
All right.
[00:16:47]
Do you so imagine
you’re still selling books, right?
[00:16:51]
Yup.
OK, so if I’m looking for a given book,
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let’s just say the bold
business book, right?
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Let’s just say I sold
zillions of copies of those.
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And so there actually is
a used market for them.
[00:17:06]
They showed up used on Amazon
as soon as I published it news.
[00:17:09]
So I don’t know how that game works.
[00:17:11]
I don’t know if you know how that works,
but that’s interesting.
[00:17:14]
Oh, yeah, that probably
shouldn’t happen that fast.
[00:17:17]
But that’s all it was immediate.
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Immediate for that.
Yeah.
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Oh, it was a weird it was a weird thing.
It still is,
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because I sold a lot of books,
but I wouldn’t call it enough to justify.
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The market, the U.S. market
that shows up for those books,
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I guess a few thousand,
[00:17:40]
something like that,
but when you look on Amazon,
[00:17:43]
you look at UTS, there’s
dozens of businesses selling my books.
[00:17:48]
You blink.
[00:17:50]
So that’s not right.
[00:17:52]
I could give you a theory
on why that would be.
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I’d be very interested.
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There’s a very there’s a a very,
very small niche market on Amazon.
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And what they do is they basically
extract all the listings from Amazon.
[00:18:09]
They look at the pricing
on those listings.
[00:18:11]
They jacked the pricing up by five bucks
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or 10 bucks, and then they listed
under their account on Amazon.
[00:18:18]
All right.
If for some reason somebody buys it
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from them,
they just go and buy it from a different
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seller on Amazon and have
it shipped to the.
[00:18:28]
Wow.
[00:18:29]
And I be willing to bet you that
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those first people you saw
your listing for your book just showed up
[00:18:38]
on their list and they just
loaded it into their system.
[00:18:42]
So what they were probably doing is you
were there were probably new copies
[00:18:46]
of your book being sold cheaper
than they were selling them.
[00:18:49]
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
[00:18:51]
A lot of them are.
Yeah.
[00:18:52]
We’re just sold.
Oddly priced.
[00:18:54]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:18:55]
So if, if, if one of them is what a sold
[00:18:58]
they would have just bought it new from
one of the one of those cheap sellers
[00:19:02]
and just had that seller
ship it to their customer.
[00:19:05]
It’s a huge market.
[00:19:06]
I don’t encourage anybody to ever
try that market because it’s.
[00:19:11]
You’re just waiting for your
account to be killed.
[00:19:14]
Yeah, someone’s shady is you’re
essentially banking on people’s.
[00:19:20]
Sucker, this and it’s
[00:19:24]
in it’s nearly impossible to do nowadays
on Amazon because they require you
[00:19:29]
to submit tracking on everything,
and if you don’t hit a certain metric
[00:19:32]
on this tracking,
you’re going to run into problems.
[00:19:35]
And that might be hard to do when
you’re not shipping the item out.
[00:19:38]
Yeah, interesting.
[00:19:41]
So interesting.
[00:19:42]
I just figured it was Amazon
trying to undercut me.
[00:19:47]
Essentially if they sell the book.
[00:19:48]
Right, which it’s its print on demand,
that was kind of the big thing.
[00:19:52]
Like how are there used copies
when it’s print on demand.
[00:19:56]
Mm hmm.
So it’s print on demand.
[00:19:58]
And some of the used books
used in air quotes.
[00:20:02]
Right.
[00:20:02]
Were showing up at less than
what retail is.
[00:20:07]
A tiny fraction less,
but still less Amson a lot of people are
[00:20:10]
going there for the deal, right,
instead of whatever, 16, 20 bucks,
[00:20:16]
whatever it was,
it was 15 or 19 or whatever,
[00:20:21]
whatever it was, it was like
25 cents less or something where someone
[00:20:25]
could potentially click
on that and buy it.
[00:20:28]
And then I wondered if that was just
Amazon’s way to cut me and the author out.
[00:20:33]
Yeah, I, I can’t really say I don’t
know, it’s just a weird, though
[00:20:39]
weird phenomena, but yeah,
it doesn’t matter,
[00:20:43]
doesn’t matter if we’re not making a whole
lot of money off of books anyways,
[00:20:47]
but are
[00:20:49]
not, I guess, authors of books.
Yeah.
[00:20:51]
Yeah.
[00:20:53]
You’re doing just fine.
Yeah.
[00:20:55]
So tell me you’ve advanced though
to the point of going beyond the basement
[00:20:59]
of a duplex and into a warehouse,
is that right? That’s correct.
[00:21:03]
All right. And when did that happen?
[00:21:06]
That was probably so when when I started
that initial wholesale business,
[00:21:12]
we started we started moving
[00:21:17]
at a point in time.
[00:21:18]
What we were going to do was and this is
[00:21:20]
very common in the Amazon
selling media world.
[00:21:23]
Yeah.
[00:21:23]
Was we were going to order
Gaylord’s of books.
[00:21:27]
If you’re familiar with what a Gaylord is,
[00:21:28]
a big cardboard box that looks that fits
on top of the pallet at a Gaylord.
[00:21:33]
So huge volumes of books.
Yeah.
[00:21:36]
And at one point in time
I was given the opportunity to buy.
[00:21:43]
But I had to buy it by the semi load.
[00:21:46]
Wow, I’m full of media.
OK.
[00:21:51]
They called it Mixed Media was an anything
CD, DVD, whatever they had that they were
[00:21:55]
just going to throw into these Gaylord’s
and they would ship them to us.
[00:21:59]
So.
So when that came up, I said,
[00:22:03]
we can try this,
but we got to have a space.
[00:22:05]
All right.
So we went I went and found it was
[00:22:08]
basically just a storage unit in our
climate controlled storage unit.
[00:22:14]
Ironically, that storage unit had.
[00:22:18]
Had Internet already in it,
which I was like, why, but but they did.
[00:22:25]
Oh, it’s awesome.
[00:22:26]
So it had power in the
unit and everything.
[00:22:29]
It was just set up perfectly.
[00:22:30]
Wow.
[00:22:32]
Well, we started doing that and
and we did that one time.
[00:22:37]
And I said, I will never do that again
because it was just such a pain to deal.
[00:22:42]
All right.
[00:22:43]
Well, I imagine a lot of the stuff
was probably not sellable.
[00:22:46]
Yeah, a lot of a lot of just garbage.
[00:22:49]
And it was just we weren’t equipped.
[00:22:52]
We didn’t have the equipment that you need
[00:22:54]
to tip these Gaylord’s
over to get the items out.
[00:22:56]
So we had people sitting inside
[00:22:58]
the Gaylords digging stuff
out and it just took forever.
[00:23:01]
All right.
[00:23:02]
I probably took us 30 days
to get through that truckload.
[00:23:06]
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, yeah.
[00:23:08]
And when it was all done, like,
[00:23:11]
as you can probably imagine,
90 percent of it was just garbage.
[00:23:16]
Oh, 90 percent.
Oh, yeah.
[00:23:18]
Yeah.
You can just throw away stuff.
[00:23:21]
All right.
And and the rest of it.
[00:23:24]
And there was a lot of good stuff
[00:23:26]
in there, but it was just wasn’t
worth the labor to do it.
[00:23:30]
Gotcha.
OK.
[00:23:31]
Yeah.
You’re panning for gold at that point.
[00:23:33]
Yeah.
[00:23:34]
So Ultrasuede so we,
we did that and I said I would never do it
[00:23:38]
again but kept the warehouse anyways
because it was just an ideal situation.
[00:23:42]
It worked very well.
[00:23:44]
And you know, at this point this is like
two thousand sixteen that this happened.
[00:23:51]
Oh, nice experience.
[00:23:54]
So at that point in time.
[00:23:56]
I had been working from home so long
[00:23:58]
that I kind of enjoyed having
the separation of not having I mean, yes,
[00:24:04]
I still worked at home because I could do
a lot of things from my laptop,
[00:24:07]
but I could still leave a lot of it
at the end of the day and go home.
[00:24:12]
Right.
Totally understand.
[00:24:13]
I think a lot of people understand that.
[00:24:16]
So I.
[00:24:18]
So I kept that warehouse just
[00:24:20]
for that reason,
but then as this has progressed now,
[00:24:24]
now I have to have a warehouse because
it’s just growing so big that once again,
[00:24:30]
I would never be able
to do it out of my house.
[00:24:32]
All right.
[00:24:33]
So do you.
[00:24:34]
You must have employees now.
[00:24:38]
No, not really.
[00:24:39]
I have I have people that help me.
[00:24:42]
OK, so, all right.
[00:24:45]
I try to I try to do very flexible
scheduling where they
[00:24:50]
they only have to work when they want to
work and things like that just because I.
[00:24:55]
That’s kind of.
[00:24:57]
What I like about my business,
so I have people working for me.
[00:25:02]
I want to give them the same opportunity
[00:25:05]
so they can have the same treat that I
have where they don’t have to,
[00:25:09]
I don’t write up a schedule
or anything like that.
[00:25:12]
They just when they want to.
[00:25:14]
They message me and say,
hey, can I come work today?
[00:25:17]
All right.
So so are you.
[00:25:20]
It sounds like you’re no longer buying
[00:25:21]
stuff by the Gaylord
or at least not from those companies.
[00:25:25]
No.
[00:25:26]
All my product now does come
in on pallets,
[00:25:29]
but it’s way different now because
now my suppliers, I’ve worked it out where
[00:25:34]
they send me a list
of what they have available.
[00:25:37]
Oh, nice.
And I had a custom piece of software
[00:25:40]
written that I can run this
list through this software.
[00:25:42]
It gives me a whole bunch of Amazon
data about that, those products.
[00:25:46]
Wow.
And I just filter down based on those
[00:25:50]
that information to what I think can sell
profitably and then I just order
[00:25:55]
everything off the list I
think is profitable to sell.
[00:25:59]
All right.
Wow.
[00:26:00]
Well, OK, you in a few sentences, you
just went through some huge stuff there.
[00:26:05]
One year custom software written.
[00:26:07]
Yes.
[00:26:09]
So it just looked at ISBN numbers or YPA,
so I submit a list of ISBN numbers
[00:26:15]
and the price that they want for it,
and then it’s just a piece of software
[00:26:21]
that grabs Amazon, has an API where they
make all their pricing information
[00:26:26]
available and it just goes up,
grabs all that information from Amazon
[00:26:32]
and just attaches it
basically to the spreadsheet.
[00:26:35]
So I get it back and it tells me all
[00:26:36]
the different pertinent information
I want to know from Amazon.
[00:26:41]
That’s incredible. How did you find
someone to write code like that?
[00:26:45]
So it’s it’s kind of funny because about
[00:26:50]
about a year and a half ago,
I just saw something on a message board
[00:26:54]
that a guy wanted to start a like
a mastermind of Amazon sellers.
[00:26:58]
And I’m like, I’d be interested in that.
[00:27:00]
So I reached out to him.
[00:27:02]
We started this mastermind.
[00:27:04]
And one of the guys that then came
in to the mastermind
[00:27:08]
was happens to just be he’s been an Amazon
seller almost as long as I have.
[00:27:13]
But his whole his model is
very different from me.
[00:27:17]
He’s very, very data analytical.
Mm hmm.
[00:27:21]
So this was like I basically told him what
I when I first started doing this,
[00:27:26]
there was just an over the counter
software I could subscribe to that
[00:27:32]
did exactly what this new software does,
[00:27:35]
but it took twenty four hours
to run one of my lists through Wow.
[00:27:40]
Piece of software.
[00:27:41]
And I told him that and he’s like,
that’s, that doesn’t make any sense.
[00:27:45]
He’s like, you should be able
to do that in 13 minutes.
[00:27:49]
How long that list should be able to.
Right.
[00:27:52]
And I said, well, can you write
a program for me that would do that?
[00:27:56]
And he’s like, and he actually took it.
[00:27:58]
It now takes like
[00:28:00]
three minutes to run because what he does
is he cashes all the data on his server.
[00:28:06]
OK, so I like my data that I get is not
[00:28:10]
one hundred percent up to date,
but it serves a purpose just fine.
[00:28:14]
Sure.
It’s close enough.
[00:28:16]
Yeah.
[00:28:16]
So and then the the wholesaler’s
that you’re buying this product from,
[00:28:20]
they’re allowing you to go line
by line to say yay or nay.
[00:28:23]
Yeah, exactly.
Wow.
[00:28:25]
And essentially just picking
the stuff that is good enough margin.
[00:28:28]
Yep.
Wow.
[00:28:31]
That’s cool.
Yeah.
[00:28:33]
That is super cool.
[00:28:35]
And it’s it is also a model
that I’ve never seen anybody else do,
[00:28:40]
all right,
like I’ve never seen anybody that has
[00:28:44]
an arrangement like that with
somebody to purchase that way.
[00:28:48]
Yeah, so, so interesting.
[00:28:50]
So are these these wholesalers,
[00:28:52]
are they just buying libraries or
are they getting their volume from.
[00:28:56]
Pretty much.
So the funniest part about all this is,
[00:29:00]
is that all of my wholesalers
are Amazon sellers.
[00:29:04]
Well, just bizarre.
[00:29:06]
But but there’s a lot
of reasons why this works.
[00:29:10]
And it’s because they’re doing.
[00:29:14]
You say they’re buying.
[00:29:15]
Are they buying libraries?
Kind of.
[00:29:18]
Yes.
[00:29:19]
So, like, one of them is
[00:29:22]
one of them has deals with just literally
thousands of libraries across the country.
[00:29:27]
And whenever the library has books
[00:29:31]
that they no longer want,
that there’s no longer keeping
[00:29:35]
in circulation, they basically just send
these books off to these
[00:29:40]
this company.
[00:29:41]
And the other one runs this massive site
on the Internet that you can just go
[00:29:46]
to and you can scan your book or CD into
and they’ll make you a cash offer for it.
[00:29:50]
Oh, really?
Yeah.
[00:29:52]
And that’s how they get
all their inventory that.
[00:29:56]
I want to pause for a second because this
[00:29:57]
blows my mind that because you
take a product like a book.
[00:30:01]
Right.
[00:30:01]
So let’s just say
on the high side, 25 bucks.
[00:30:06]
You have so many hands
and trucks and pallets and shelves
[00:30:12]
touching that book before it gets
to the consumer,
[00:30:16]
that for a used book
to for anyone in that line
[00:30:22]
to make any money selling that used book
just blows my mind.
[00:30:27]
Yeah, it’s well, and that’s why where you
[00:30:31]
come into the world where 90 percent
of what you’ll pick up is garbage.
[00:30:38]
Sure.
[00:30:38]
Because the stuff that I sell is
not going to be something that
[00:30:43]
you’re going to walk into a
Barnes and Noble and buy.
[00:30:46]
It’s going to be rare out of print.
[00:30:47]
It’s going to be stuff that,
you know, they only ran like James Katamon
[00:30:53]
book could potentially be a very good
seller for me because there just isn’t
[00:30:58]
enough of them in circulation
for Amazon to keep it in.
[00:31:02]
I’ll get you a bunch of a man
[00:31:05]
to make some money.
[00:31:07]
So, as you know, I came across this book
[00:31:12]
is recommended by a friend,
[00:31:14]
I want to say the Gracies under
supercool book about this little tugboat
[00:31:19]
in the Atlantic of Canada
that just would rescue ships.
[00:31:23]
Supercool book, I want to say is printed.
[00:31:30]
30, 40 years ago, it’s a while,
[00:31:33]
it’s a while, and I looked for that book
on Amazon just as a recommendation
[00:31:38]
and I want to say that’s a new one
for hundreds of dollars.
[00:31:43]
Hundreds of dollars. Like what?
[00:31:46]
This is like college textbook pricing,
just like they got you.
[00:31:51]
They’re going to college,
you kind of thing.
[00:31:53]
Like this is just a casual read.
[00:31:56]
So all of a sudden, like,
whoa, what is this thing?
[00:31:59]
So I only used one on Amazon, whatever.
[00:32:02]
I didn’t pay that kind of money for it.
[00:32:04]
But I showed the link to my buddy because
I’m like, what is this book made of?
[00:32:08]
Like they they put a sheet
of gold in there, something like.
[00:32:12]
What is interesting must have been out
of print, I don’t know if it’s real
[00:32:17]
and you’ll see you’ll see books if you
scour Amazon, you’ll see books where
[00:32:21]
the low price is nine hundred
dollars or something like that.
[00:32:25]
This is crazy.
[00:32:27]
It’s just a supply and demand thing.
[00:32:29]
It’s more than likely that person that’s
[00:32:31]
selling it for nine hundred dollars is one
of those drop shippers that I was telling
[00:32:35]
you about from another
person and sells it.
[00:32:39]
And whatever software they’re using to set
[00:32:41]
their price just jacked the price up
really high because they know they’re
[00:32:44]
going to have to pay for it if
it ever sells just OK.
[00:32:49]
So a lot of that is like pricing
anomalies, I would call it.
[00:32:52]
It’s all right.
It’s a lot of people call it a price are
[00:32:56]
going haywire because on Amazon,
Amazon sellers, I have a program that sits
[00:33:02]
in the background,
watches the Amazon market and adjust
[00:33:05]
prices based on what
the Amazon markets do.
[00:33:08]
Really?
OK, so that’s super cool, so
[00:33:13]
you can set rules and things like
[00:33:15]
that within that replacer,
but there’s only so much you can do
[00:33:18]
in every once in a while,
they’ll go haywire.
[00:33:22]
All right.
And the important thing to know, too, is,
[00:33:25]
is that ninety five percent of people
that are selling books on Amazon.
[00:33:29]
Really don’t know what they’re doing,
[00:33:31]
so when they set up these reproducers,
they have no idea what they’re setting.
[00:33:36]
So they a lot of times they’ll set it up
[00:33:38]
really weird where it’ll do
just things that don’t make any sense.
[00:33:43]
Interesting.
[00:33:44]
All right.
[00:33:46]
All right, so when you your competition,
competition, so to speak, on Amazon,
[00:33:51]
is it the mom and pop shops that are just
selling like they happen to have
[00:33:54]
a bookstore or used bookstore
and they’re just trying to find a market?
[00:33:59]
Yeah, there’s probably
there’s probably ninety five percent
[00:34:03]
of those, but then there’s a lot of other
types of people out there.
[00:34:08]
I mean, one of my suppliers,
like I said, is a
[00:34:12]
an Amazon seller themselves, but in their
revenue for a year is 65 million.
[00:34:18]
So there are some very large
sellers also doing this.
[00:34:22]
And
[00:34:24]
to the best of my knowledge,
[00:34:26]
that suppliers that I have is actually
the second largest bookseller on Amazon.
[00:34:32]
So there’s actually one
that’s bigger than that.
[00:34:34]
So they’re doing 65 million,
ten bucks or so at a time.
[00:34:40]
Not even 10 bucks at a time,
most of the stuff I’m going to tell you,
[00:34:44]
they’re probably selling their
milk and maybe two bucks
[00:34:48]
now on an item, but they’re literally
[00:34:50]
selling thousands
and thousands of items a day.
[00:34:54]
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
[00:34:56]
That seems like an awful
lot of work for you.
[00:34:59]
I don’t like
[00:35:01]
those companies are doing like I
talked about with the Gaylord thing.
[00:35:05]
That’s their whole business.
[00:35:06]
They do the Gaylords
[00:35:08]
and I don’t know how they manage to do,
but they’re literally running through two
[00:35:12]
hundred thousand bucks a day,
probably in their warehouse.
[00:35:16]
So.
Wow.
[00:35:18]
All right.
[00:35:19]
Let’s I want to shift and talk about CDs
and DVDs,
[00:35:22]
because I can see that the flow of the way
that people consume media now is changing.
[00:35:29]
I still love my CDs
and I watch DVDs every once in a while,
[00:35:33]
but there’s Netflix and Hulu
and 50 million other places.
[00:35:37]
I want to take your money
[00:35:38]
to show you a movie that you
may vaguely be interested in.
[00:35:43]
Hmm.
[00:35:44]
How has the market changed
with CDs and DVDs?
[00:35:47]
Blu ray is whatever.
[00:35:48]
In the past it has become
a lot lot smaller.
[00:35:53]
But but the beauty of it is,
[00:35:57]
is that the market is still way
big enough that a person like me can make
[00:36:01]
a little bit of money that I
need to make sure that market
[00:36:06]
and people a lot of times will ask me,
well,
[00:36:10]
when are you going to stop selling DVDs
because or where are you going to sell?
[00:36:14]
I don’t actually sell DVDs.
I only sell CDs.
[00:36:17]
But oh, gosh, I think when you when are
[00:36:19]
you going to sell stop selling CDs
and like, that market is dead.
[00:36:23]
And I’m like or like when a when
is the CD market going to die?
[00:36:27]
And I’m like, it’s already dead.
[00:36:30]
So
[00:36:31]
the way I feel like I figure
[00:36:33]
my generation in prior, you know,
the only people left still buying CDs.
[00:36:39]
Yeah.
[00:36:39]
Oh, I don’t really put
a lot of attention in CDs.
[00:36:43]
I do CDS has been done the same
way for the past six years.
[00:36:48]
OK, and I don’t ever change anything.
[00:36:50]
I just keep it going, just waiting for
the day where people stop buying them.
[00:36:54]
But I don’t see that day
coming any time soon.
[00:36:58]
No, I’m still I’m still old school, but
I’m also I just like to I like to own it.
[00:37:04]
I like to have it.
Yeah.
[00:37:06]
And I go through enough cars where
sometimes I still have my cassettes.
[00:37:12]
Sometimes you buy a car that’s only got a
cassette player and you want some tunes.
[00:37:17]
That’s what you’re going to do.
[00:37:19]
And believe it or not,
[00:37:20]
there are still people out there
selling cassettes on Amazon TV.
[00:37:23]
So,
[00:37:24]
yeah, there is that market still exists.
[00:37:28]
I heard that when
[00:37:31]
I can’t
[00:37:33]
I can’t think of the movie where the guy
to Walking in space Marvel movie, whatever
[00:37:38]
with little Rick, one guy
on my mind just playing with it.
[00:37:40]
No,
[00:37:41]
it’s what you’re thinking on one of these
cartoon movies or Guardians of the Galaxy.
[00:37:44]
Oh, never seen it.
So.
[00:37:46]
All right.
You’re probably the only one.
[00:37:49]
Anyway, I’m probably
[00:37:52]
is on there with this little Walkman
throwing a cassette in there.
[00:37:56]
And I had my little brother and my big
brothers, big sisters, little brother,
[00:37:59]
ask me, what is that and what
do you mean what is that like?
[00:38:05]
That’s what we used to go
to the mall for, man.
[00:38:08]
And then he slapped the mall.
[00:38:12]
Yeah,
[00:38:14]
and that’s literally yeah,
[00:38:16]
that’s the way the market is, but it’s
still big enough to sustain and change.
[00:38:20]
The way I see it is I figure
I figure I got 10 years left.
[00:38:26]
I need to be selling CDs.
All right.
[00:38:28]
People like you are not going to die
[00:38:30]
in the next 10 years,
so we certainly should not.
[00:38:33]
Yeah.
[00:38:34]
So I think I think that
I think I’m good to go.
[00:38:38]
Oh, that’s cool.
That is cool.
[00:38:40]
So in regards to CDs,
[00:38:42]
are you getting those essentially
from the same wholesalers or you.
[00:38:45]
Yup.
[00:38:47]
Whatever goodwill or whatever
has just been out there.
[00:38:50]
Ironically, this whole wholesaler
[00:38:53]
structure started with the CDs because
I found the wholesaler.
[00:38:59]
Through CDs first, at the time,
they were only doing CDs, all right?
[00:39:03]
And I did the CDs for about
a year and a half.
[00:39:05]
Then they got in the box, all right.
[00:39:08]
And I started playing around with the box
and then from from that then I went
[00:39:13]
and found the other
wholesaler to get more books.
[00:39:16]
And because the other wholesalers
[00:39:18]
completely book focus,
they don’t do anything.
[00:39:21]
CDs are.
All right.
[00:39:22]
All right.
That is cool.
[00:39:25]
So are you essentially just selling books
[00:39:27]
and CDs or have you branched
out into other areas as well?
[00:39:30]
I played I played around with
[00:39:33]
other things, and it’s just I always come
back to like I said, I’ll test out
[00:39:39]
this market and I’ll have some
success and it’ll be fine.
[00:39:44]
But I never scale it to the point where I
can really say it was a success and then I
[00:39:48]
just get annoyed with it and or just don’t
really it just gets pushed to the side.
[00:39:54]
And I don’t really, because I’m just doing
so well with the books that I’ve never.
[00:40:00]
It’s never become a big
part of my business.
[00:40:02]
All right, that’s for my
me and my software.
[00:40:06]
The guy that wrote my custom software,
[00:40:08]
he wants to work on a special program that
focuses on stuff, not books this year.
[00:40:15]
All right.
So the idea is that maybe I’ll tap
[00:40:18]
into that program and I’ll
give it another try for.
[00:40:23]
For non book products, nice this year,
but we’ll see how that goes.
[00:40:28]
All right, so you you also help people
get started on Amazon, is that right?
[00:40:34]
Correct.
OK, how big of your.
[00:40:37]
Is of your job, let’s say,
[00:40:39]
from a time point of view, is that so
basically what I with with the wholesale
[00:40:45]
side, that the hell,
when I when you say I’m not coaching
[00:40:50]
people per say, I will coach
them if they need the coaching.
[00:40:53]
But the main focus of it is,
is that I allow other people to tap into
[00:40:57]
my suppliers in order books from them
the same way I own the books.
[00:41:02]
Gotcha.
[00:41:02]
OK, so that’s where where
that program comes from.
[00:41:06]
And it has actually become one
of the biggest focuses of my time now
[00:41:10]
because what we have found
to be way more beneficial.
[00:41:14]
When I first set it up,
I envision people ordering items and then
[00:41:18]
they would be shipped to them and they
would do their thing with them
[00:41:21]
while we found that it’s way more cost
effective for them to come in here.
[00:41:25]
And then I prep everything and ship it
to the Amazon warehouse on their behalf.
[00:41:31]
Wow, so.
[00:41:33]
And so that’s like become the biggest
time consuming of my business is just.
[00:41:41]
Prepping all the stuff that comes
[00:41:42]
in for me, as well as all the stuff
that comes in for these customers, because
[00:41:47]
the margins are much smaller
with the wholesale customers.
[00:41:51]
So I’m obviously processing
through a lot more items.
[00:41:54]
Yeah.
So just having the time to can.
[00:41:59]
Flip all that stuff around and get it
from politics, where the biggest kind
[00:42:02]
of strength that’s all right, is that more
lucrative than doing your own thing?
[00:42:09]
So it is not more lucrative.
[00:42:11]
OK, what I like about it is that
any issues I’ve ever had with cash flow
[00:42:18]
in my business have gone completely
away by having this model.
[00:42:23]
Gotcha.
OK, essentially I order in the books
[00:42:28]
by the time I process everything through
and send it out for my wholesalers.
[00:42:32]
They’ve paid for all the books.
[00:42:34]
Everything my books to so and I send
my books to Amazon, I,
[00:42:40]
I don’t have to now sit and wait six
months to get my money out of it.
[00:42:43]
I’ve already paid for the books
with the money from the wholesalers
[00:42:46]
and now all of the money coming
in from Amazon as just profits.
[00:42:51]
Nice.
All right.
[00:42:54]
All right.
[00:42:55]
Let’s talk about capacity
[00:42:57]
because it sounds like a few people
helping you on the fly as needed.
[00:43:02]
But there’s also space because
some of the stuff takes up space.
[00:43:06]
So if you’re sending it to Amazon right
away on issue, I guess where you in?
[00:43:11]
It’s not too much of an issue,
[00:43:13]
but I still have pallets laying
around that have to be processed.
[00:43:18]
So space pallets of stuff.
Yeah.
[00:43:20]
So I mean I mean,
right now down downstairs I have two
[00:43:24]
pallets sitting sitting there
waiting to be processed.
[00:43:26]
So.
All right, so the space is an issue,
[00:43:29]
even though it does inevitably turn
around and go back out to Amazon.
[00:43:33]
All right.
[00:43:35]
So, yeah, the space and capacity
this is when I first started this.
[00:43:41]
I was really funny because I never thought
I would ever hit a ceiling on capacity.
[00:43:46]
Sure.
[00:43:46]
And now it’s grown way bigger than I
ever thought it would with the nice.
[00:43:52]
And now I’m starting to see, OK.
[00:43:56]
Maybe there are capacity issues to this,
[00:43:58]
maybe my suppliers are going to run out
of books at some point in time because.
[00:44:02]
Oh, because the last few months.
[00:44:07]
Have been kind of like I’ve had supplier
or clients coming to me and saying.
[00:44:13]
Where’s all the stuff,
where’s all this stuff,
[00:44:15]
because I’m not getting nearly
as much as I have been getting.
[00:44:19]
So I guess I don’t know for sure.
[00:44:21]
But in regards to our local library here,
[00:44:24]
they’re they’re not closed,
but they’re 98 percent closed.
[00:44:30]
So I imagine they’re probably not
even processing getting rid of books.
[00:44:33]
That could be a huge part of the problem.
[00:44:37]
I think my big part of the problem
for the last few months has been
[00:44:43]
that I think these people are retail
focused first or they do wholesale OK.
[00:44:49]
And I think because of Christmas,
[00:44:50]
they’ve been cutting back what they’re
going to do wholesale,
[00:44:54]
get you to keep the bandwidth open for
the increased demand during Christmas.
[00:45:00]
Sure.
[00:45:01]
So have you seen this
before in years past?
[00:45:03]
No, no, no, no.
[00:45:05]
Because I was never ordering
at the capacity I’m ordering now.
[00:45:10]
Oh, there was probably never an issue like
[00:45:13]
it could have happened years past, but it
would have never been at the capacity.
[00:45:18]
Like there still would have always
been way more than I needed there.
[00:45:22]
Sure.
It’s all interesting.
[00:45:25]
Oh, that’s cool.
[00:45:27]
Well, I mean, that’s a good problem.
[00:45:29]
Yeah, that’s ah.
[00:45:30]
That you know, that you’re you’ve hit
that volume threshold where, you know,
[00:45:33]
like, oh, here’s a problem
I didn’t even know existed.
[00:45:38]
And it’s extremely difficult to get
another supplier
[00:45:44]
because it is a very unorthodox
[00:45:47]
way of purchasing books
that essentially one by one.
[00:45:52]
Yeah.
So what I.
[00:45:57]
The people I’ve approached about doing
[00:45:58]
this, they’re kind of like,
why, why would we do that?
[00:46:01]
You know, like so and and I
did I did a pallet of stuff.
[00:46:06]
Hope it’s good.
Yeah.
[00:46:08]
And they’re like, well,
we’ll sell you Gaylord’s.
[00:46:10]
And, you know, and that’s just they’re
going to throw random stuff in Gaylord’s.
[00:46:14]
And I don’t want to ever go down that band
[00:46:16]
because you don’t want
to deal with the waste of it.
[00:46:19]
Right.
[00:46:19]
When I have to get rid
of 90 percent of the books.
[00:46:22]
Yeah.
You’re essentially paying for somebody
[00:46:24]
else’s trash in the hopes that there’s
some of them to justify the time.
[00:46:28]
Yeah.
For the 10 percent.
[00:46:29]
That’s good.
Yeah.
[00:46:31]
So so.
[00:46:33]
So, yeah, I’m kind of at that.
[00:46:35]
That’s where I’m at today.
[00:46:36]
Where OK, how do I expand this further
or what do I start looking into.
[00:46:43]
Like, like you said, other categories
to go to and stuff like that.
[00:46:48]
So interesting.
Oh, that’s cool.
[00:46:51]
That’s super cool.
There’s been some of the the challenges
[00:46:55]
that you came across besides
this whole running out of.
[00:46:58]
Inventory of products saying that you
[00:47:00]
didn’t anticipate over the 15 years
you’ve been doing this, the beginning?
[00:47:04]
Well, I mean,
the hard lessons when when Amazon did
[00:47:09]
that, did that fee increase and stuff
like that, that was a real eye opener.
[00:47:15]
One of the hardest things that I realized
now, and this is a huge part of the reason
[00:47:20]
why we have why I started the wholesale
part of it was because I realized
[00:47:27]
and I actually think this is something
that you say in your book, you know,
[00:47:31]
having having one customer
is a terrible idea.
[00:47:35]
Yeah.
And when you even though when you’re
[00:47:38]
selling on Amazon,
even though you’re selling to millions
[00:47:40]
of people, you really
only have one customer.
[00:47:44]
Yeah.
[00:47:44]
At any point in time, Amazon can
take all those customers away.
[00:47:48]
They prove that.
Yes.
[00:47:50]
So that’s where why that was where
[00:47:53]
the whole motivation for the
wholesale thing came from is.
[00:47:56]
It took me 13, 15 years to figure it out.
[00:47:59]
But like, I need to figure
out something that.
[00:48:04]
I can do that, does not even though it
is kind of directly related to Amazon.
[00:48:09]
It’s not my money is not
coming from Amazon, right.
[00:48:14]
So that was one of the biggest obstacles.
[00:48:17]
And then when I started that wholesale
[00:48:19]
business,
one of the hardest parts about it was
[00:48:23]
when you’re an Amazon seller, marketing is
not really a thing you ever think about.
[00:48:28]
Sure.
[00:48:29]
Well, getting clients is not
a thing you ever think about.
[00:48:32]
Oh, you just sourced the inventory
in Amazon, brings the customers to you.
[00:48:37]
All right.
So then I start this wholesale thing and I
[00:48:41]
sit there and I say, OK,
so now how do I get somebody to sign off?
[00:48:45]
Just just the phone and will it.
[00:48:47]
Yeah, I saw so and but the blessing
in disguise with it was,
[00:48:53]
was that with a wholesale client,
all my wholesale clients are worth.
[00:48:58]
I get a wholesale client,
one that I would consider real client
[00:49:02]
that’s worth 15,
20 thousand dollars worth of sales.
[00:49:06]
Nice.
OK, so.
[00:49:09]
The good part about it is,
yes, now I’ve kind of learned how
[00:49:13]
to market what
I’m blessed also in the sense that I don’t
[00:49:18]
have to get, you know, I don’t have
to market to a thousand people.
[00:49:22]
I only need the market to like.
[00:49:23]
My whole goal was to get 10 people,
which I’ve gotten to.
[00:49:28]
And
[00:49:31]
but so while I still feel blessed because
[00:49:35]
the marketing side of it was easy for me
because there was only 10 clients instead
[00:49:39]
of a thousand clients,
but that was the scariest part about it,
[00:49:42]
was because I had never done marketing
up to interesting at all in my patristic.
[00:49:49]
So that is cool.
[00:49:51]
So you just to clarify,
I guess, what you said before.
[00:49:56]
You don’t have to do even
Amazon ads or something.
[00:50:00]
There’s enough people looking
for the products that you’re selling.
[00:50:03]
Yeah, I like Amazon ads is really what it
[00:50:07]
that’s designed for is if you’re going
to launch your brand new product that has
[00:50:11]
never been on Amazon
to Amazon and sell it, well,
[00:50:16]
what’s going to happen is you’re going
to create that product on Amazon
[00:50:20]
and Amazon is going to give
it no weight whatsoever.
[00:50:22]
All right.
[00:50:23]
They’re going to pretend
like it doesn’t exist.
[00:50:25]
They’re going to assume nobody wants it.
Sure.
[00:50:28]
And what will happen?
[00:50:31]
So then you start targeting ads to it
that gets people to buy it.
[00:50:35]
And once people start buying that on
Amazon, that gives it more weight.
[00:50:40]
It starts that’s where you start getting
[00:50:42]
organic people to organic customers
to come to that listing and buy it.
[00:50:47]
All right.
[00:50:48]
With what I do,
all of this stuff already has that weight
[00:50:52]
underneath it because it
already exists today on Amazon.
[00:50:56]
Interesting.
OK, so I get that organic.
[00:51:01]
Traffic right away without
doing anything nice.
[00:51:06]
So so, yeah, there’s no
marketing whatsoever.
[00:51:10]
So the markets,
you get the Charlotte’s Web book or
[00:51:12]
whatever someone’s already looking
for that you don’t have to push it.
[00:51:15]
Exactly.
[00:51:16]
You just have to compete with whoever else
is selling Charlotte’s Web.
[00:51:20]
Exactly.
[00:51:21]
Interest in the software that you have
helps you figure out an ideal price.
[00:51:26]
Exactly.
That’s cool.
[00:51:28]
That’s super cool.
[00:51:30]
So it’s very much more like being
just a wholesaler for Amazon.
[00:51:33]
Yeah.
[00:51:35]
You know, not not being a.
[00:51:40]
You know, like a traditional business
[00:51:42]
that’s got to drive up their customers
and things like that, it’s
[00:51:45]
wholesaling directly to Amazon and letting
Amazon take care of all that for you.
[00:51:51]
So what is compelling about your business
[00:51:53]
is that you can essentially
set your own hours
[00:51:58]
on pitfalls. Right?
[00:51:59]
There’s a huge volume of freedom there,
but there’s also the physical contact
[00:52:04]
that you have with the product
that it’s not exactly a live on the beach
[00:52:08]
kind of thing, you know, no, it cannot
be done remotely, unfortunately.
[00:52:13]
So that’s a cool, interesting
hybrid model, I guess, so to speak.
[00:52:19]
But there’s something to be said about
[00:52:21]
having the freedom to do to work
when you want to work kind of thing.
[00:52:24]
Like there’s no you’re not committed,
I imagine, to the most part of having
[00:52:28]
to be sitting at your desk at 3:00
in the afternoon or whatever.
[00:52:32]
The way I describe it to people is,
[00:52:34]
is that I work unless there’s something
going on, if I you know what I mean.
[00:52:40]
And that’s really how it is.
[00:52:42]
Like Monday through Sunday.
[00:52:45]
I literally if I have nothing going on,
I’m going to be here working.
[00:52:49]
But if something comes up on a Tuesday
[00:52:52]
at two o’clock, well, then I’m just
going to go and do my own thing.
[00:52:56]
That is awesome, you know?
[00:52:57]
So that is cool.
[00:53:00]
Yeah, that is cool.
[00:53:02]
Eric, this has been awesome.
[00:53:03]
I want to ask you just really quick,
where did the name come from?
[00:53:06]
The Kings Ridge media.
[00:53:08]
This is a very funny story, actually.
[00:53:11]
So me and my brother,
who is my partner in a point in time.
[00:53:15]
So we started out, we started out,
[00:53:17]
I came up with the name,
which was a very bad idea.
[00:53:20]
I came up with the name of extreme media
[00:53:23]
and we played on a volleyball
team and we made our company a
[00:53:29]
we made it the sponsor
of our volleyball team.
[00:53:31]
So we all had we all had
extreme media shirts.
[00:53:34]
Extreme media are the gall
[00:53:37]
to ask you, what do you think of when
you think of the extreme media?
[00:53:41]
I kind of go to porn,
but I don’t know why.
[00:53:43]
That’s exactly what everybody
would come up and say.
[00:53:46]
You got a pawnshop to sponsor.
[00:53:48]
And I like I don’t know why I’m over
[00:53:50]
there, but yeah, I so so we’re like,
well, maybe that’s not the best name.
[00:53:58]
So then we I just told
my brother I’m like my brother.
[00:54:01]
My brother is a much more avid reader
than I am, so I’m constantly reading.
[00:54:05]
So I said, just pick
something out of a book.
[00:54:09]
You’re reading that and that’s
just what we’ll do it.
[00:54:11]
We’ll pick up a name
[00:54:14]
and we’ll put media at the end
and that’ll be the name of the company.
[00:54:18]
So we picked he kicked picked Kings Ridge,
[00:54:23]
which was the name of a town in a book
he was reading or something like that.
[00:54:26]
All right.
[00:54:27]
So when he told me that this
is what he wanted.
[00:54:31]
I heard Kings Ridge.
[00:54:34]
And I immediately went and registered
[00:54:36]
the domain Kings Ridge can be a dotcom,
and then I told them, OK, it’s there.
[00:54:41]
Go, go check it.
[00:54:42]
You kept typing it and he’s like,
it’s not coming up.
[00:54:45]
It’s not California.
[00:54:46]
And then finally, we figured
out that I didn’t hear him.
[00:54:49]
Right.
[00:54:49]
And it was actually he
said Bridge, not Ridge.
[00:54:52]
So and I’m like, well, know I’m Lakeridge.
[00:54:57]
It is
[00:54:59]
so funny.
I like it.
[00:55:02]
It’s less porn like, I guess.
[00:55:06]
Oh, it’s funny.
[00:55:08]
So so if someone was interested in getting
[00:55:11]
a little bit of help selling on Amazon,
are you a person they could talk to?
[00:55:15]
Definitely.
I love it.
[00:55:17]
I love like I will not ever like at least
unless you start calling me every day.
[00:55:22]
I’ll never ask for money
for for a one time.
[00:55:25]
Sit down to answer your
questions and stuff.
[00:55:27]
All right.
Nice.
[00:55:29]
And you can just reach out to me.
[00:55:32]
I’m on LinkedIn.
[00:55:33]
I’m on Facebook.
[00:55:35]
You can go to my website,
[00:55:37]
kingsridgemedia.com.
[00:55:40]
And there’s a little contact at the bottom
of the page that you can email me.
[00:55:45]
Very cool.
Yeah, definitely.
[00:55:47]
I’d love to sit down
with anybody interested in it.
[00:55:49]
Awesome.
[00:55:51]
Well, Eric, this has been super cool.
[00:55:54]
I feel like we can talk for a lot longer,
[00:55:55]
but we got to button up to make
sure that we fit in our radio slot.
[00:56:00]
That’s how it rolls right now.
[00:56:02]
This has been Authentic Business Adventures,
[00:56:04]
a business program that brings you
the struggle
[00:56:06]
stories and the triumphs and successes
of business owners across the land.
[00:56:11]
Coming to you, Eric.
Where are you?
[00:56:14]
Appleton, Wisconsin.
[00:56:15]
Appleton, Wisconsin.
[00:56:16]
I’m just outside of Madison, Wisconsin.
[00:56:19]
Hence our crazy Wisconsin accent.
[00:56:20]
That’s just.
[00:56:22]
Long Aaaaa.
[00:56:23]
My name is James Kademan
and Authentic Business Adventures is
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brought to you by Calls On Call,
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services for entrepreneurs in all stages
of their business. On the web,
[00:56:42]
at DrawInCustomers.com.
And of course,
[00:56:45]
The Bold Business Book,
a book for the entrepreneur in all of us
[00:56:49]
available on Amazon and wherever fine
books are sold, both new and used right.
[00:56:55]
We’d like to thank you our wonderful
listeners, as well as our guest,
[00:56:58]
Eric Wulterkens, president and founder
of Kings Ridge Media. Find us
[00:57:04]
airing locally on 103.5
Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. Sundays
[00:57:07]
at 2:00 p.m.
As well as at DrawInCustomers.com
[00:57:12]
Just click that little podcast link.
[00:57:14]
Eric, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[00:57:16]
Thank you for having me.
This is super cool.
[00:57:19]
Why don’t you tell people how to get a hold
[00:57:20]
of you again just one more time.
You can can connect with Eric
[00:57:24]
Wulterkens on LinkedIn or Facebook
or just go to KingsRidgeMedia.com
[00:57:33]
and there’s a contact
button that you can click on there to send me an email.
[00:57:35]
That’s awesome.
[00:57:37]
I love it.
Eric, this has been super cool.
[00:57:39]
I wish you great success in the next,
[00:57:42]
I guess, ten years since
that’s all you really need.
[00:57:46]
Just go from there.
CDs and books will still be selling well.
[00:57:49]
All right.
[00:57:50]
Well, to everyone else out there,
I want you to do me a huge favor,
[00:57:53]
like, subscribe, share, get the world
to know Eric and then stay awesome.
[00:57:58]
And, of course, enjoy your business.
