EFP 183: Balancing Pressure And Security

Some entrepreneurs flourish when they don’t have a penny to their name, no income, and a looming deadline. Others need at least 12 months of expenses saved up to feel secure. In this episode, we discuss the differences between the two and deliver our thoughts on who’s more successful.

We’ve given these two entrepreneurs personas — Pressure Peter and Secure Steven.

Listen in to discover what each excels at and where they struggle.

Depending on where you fall on the spectrum between the two personas, you’ll want to know how to handle yourself when you’re in or out of your element. You’ll learn just that and more in this episode, so click the play button below to get started!

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Topics Discussed This Week:

• Entrepreneurs that just REFUSE to (watch tv, go to the movies, play games, have drinks with friends, etc.) and why they bother us
  
• Pressure Peter
  • Best: Does motivated/inspired work under pressure
  • Worst: Stagnates without pressure or when back not against the wall
• Secure Steven
  • Best: Does best, thoughtful work when basic needs covered and secure
  • Worst: Fails/folds when in higher pressure scenarios
• How to Handle Yourself In or Out of Your Element
  • Lots of pressure vs. No pressure
  • Lots of security vs. No security

Mentions:

• EF Listing # 45920 a eCommerce Business in the Apparel and Accessories Niche
• Gimlet Media – Without Fail Podcast
• Derek Sivers Hell Yeah Approach
• Empire Flippers State of the Industry Report
• Hiring Content Manager
• Ruby on Rails Engineer
• Dynamite Circle
• Matt and Liz @ eBusiness Institute Interview with Alex Champagne – Director of Sales at Empire Flippers
• Reddit post

Spread the Love:

“It’s easy to let destruction take you out, but you should find a way to lock in and stay in the zone because, a lot of times, your best work is done there. – Justin – Tweet This!

“Even if you work well under pressure, having someone check your work is a smart idea.” – Justin – Tweet This!

“To build security for yourself, you need to take a real stab at entrepreneurship — not a little bite.” – Justin – Tweet This!

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Empire Flippers podcast, episode 183. Some entrepreneurs flourish when they don’t have a penny to their name, no income, and a looming deadline. Others need at least 12 months of expenses saved up to feel secure. What’s the difference between the two? Who is more successful? These are the questions we attempt to untuck in this episode, so stick with us. You’ll find the show notes for this one @empireflippers.com/allin. All right. Let’s do this.

Speaker 2:
Sick of listening to entrepreneurial advice from guys with day jobs. You want to hear about the real successes and failures that come with building an online empire? You are not alone. From San Diego to Tokyo, New York to Bangkok, join thousands of entrepreneurs and investors who are prioritizing wealth and personal freedom over the oppression of an office cubicle. Check out the empire podcast, and now your host Justin and Joe.

Justin:
All right, Joe, I’m talking about annoyance, man, CV share this annoyance of me. One of the things that bugs me are entrepreneurs that just absolutely snub their nose and refuse to do things like watch TV, or go to the movies, or play video games, or have drinks with friends. It’s all below them because they’re hustling.

Joe:
Yeah, you got to have some downtime. It’s the old adage of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I think that’s true. It also drives people crazy. I mean there are people that are out there that could do it, but I think for the vast majority of people, it’s actually detrimental. It probably has a negative effect on you to work more than let’s say 50 hours a week, your efficiency goes way down. You might as well use that time for personal time to relax, to expand your mind in other ways, and then you’re just going to have things where you can’t be doing the rock climbing, the reading, the learning a new language, the going dancing, you have to do something kind of passive and just unwinding. You have to have some time for that.

Justin:
That’s probably all true, but it just annoys me more than anything else. You know what I mean? Is it seems really judgemental like that cause you know what they’re thinking. They’re like, I don’t watch Game Of Thrones. I’m at time ourselves because game of Thrones just finished, but they’re the kind of Game Of Thrones. I would never spend so many hours watching a show like that or whatever. And you know that like in the back of their head they’re thinking of themselves, I can’t believe you spend all those hours watching a show like that. Anyway, it’s just annoying and very pretentious thing that comes from entrepreneurs. I mentioned that just because I’ve been watching like right before going to sleep, I was watching like reruns of Shark Tank on Netflix, and I’m sure most of our listeners are familiar with Shark Tank, but basically, a bunch of young, early stage entrepreneurs come into a room, and they pitch their businesses to billionaires and millionaires on this TV show.

Justin:
It’s total reality TV and a lot of that, I’m sure it’s not exactly a real, but some of the businesses are actually real. One thing I noticed about these entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs that come into the show, is that some of them are all in, right? They’ve got their life savings invested in this business they’re trying to start up, they’ve quit their only job, and they’re all about this. While others of them are only kind of dipping their toes, maybe they have a smaller investment, or they’re only working for the company, or with the company part-time. Maybe they have a spouse who’s kind of the primary breadwinner and then the other party is kind of doing the business. It’s not, they’re not all the same. And what I thought was interesting about this is that some of the businesses that work well, there’s no clear winner on the ones that are all in versus the ones that aren’t all in, so it got me thinking about like what makes a winner there and what doesn’t.

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, I think there’s always going to be a spectrum. There’s going to be those who are all in and those who just dip their toes, right? And probably the reason for that is the risk versus reward kind of thing that some people’s brains are geared to do and other people are not. And I think if you are outside the bounds of your own little personal spectrum, then you’re probably gonna spend more time worrying and fretting about things other than work. So it’s probably better to put yourself in the right space so that you’re optimizing well for working on this project, this product, or this business.

Justin:
Yeah, I thought we’d go have some fun kind of like looking at the ends of those spectrums, right? The people who are more comfortable being all in and the ones that would rather dip their toes and look at like how they can leverage their being comfortable or not being comfortable in different situations and take advantage of kind of when they’re feeling comfortable and when they’re not. We’re going to get into that. We’re kind of personify the people. We’re going to have some fun with that. Before we do any of that, buddy, let’s talk about our featured listing of the week. What you got for us, buddy?

Joe:
Yeah. This week we’re talking about listing #45920. It’s an eCommerce business in the apparel and accessories niche. It’s making $17,000 a month. It’s created back in January of 2017, so it’s born two years old. It’s a Shopify site and it has 24 products, all that are private labels, so it has a strong brand presence and a strong social presence as well. It gets most of the traffic from social media, Instagram, and Facebook, and also a fairly nice email list that is not being monetized so this is a big opportunity for the buyer. We have it listed for $497,000 so it’s just it shy under $500,000 which is a 28X multiple.

Justin:
Yeah, I know the sellers are really motivated on this one. I really wants to sell the business. I also know that he’s done some automation and put some things in place that I’ve really cut back as time over time. Also, this is one of those businesses that was built like with love from the beginning. It wasn’t a build-and-flip type business. So if you’re looking for something like that, and you want something that was built with love and care, I think this is a governor for you to look out if it’s in your price range.

Joe:
Yeah, and this is the kind of thing where he has VA’s handling everything and there’s a fulfillment center that handles all of the stock so that that kind of thing is really pretty automatic. He’s only doing about four hours of work on the business per week. So if you’re looking for something that’s truly passive in a sense that it can be, this is a larger business that not going to require a lot of your time.

Justin:
All right man, enough about that. Let’s get into it.

Joe:
Now for the heart of this weeks episode.

Justin:
All right buddy. We talked to the top of the show. We were talking about those who were kind of all in, in the business, and we talked about those who were kind of just dipping their toes and just kind of like testing the waters. And it seems to me that there are two kinds of people who are attracted to one or the other of these kinds of scenarios. And so we want to kind of personify them and talk about them a little bit. So let’s introduce Pressure Peter and Secure Steven.

Joe:
You’re always good with these alliterations, man. You’re always good with these alliterations

Justin:
I like the names because I feel like, yeah, that’s kind of me, like you can see yourself, and a little bit better I think. At least I can. So let’s just kind of describe these two people and then we’ll talk about kind of like where their strengths and weaknesses are. So the first person, Pressure Peter. Pressure Peter does best when he’s motivated or inspired by work under pressure. And so this, I’ve definitely on the spectrum I fall closer to the Pressure Peter. So when there is a timeline, a deadline drop dead time where I have to get something done by this period of time, or when I’m broke, and I needed to hustle up some cash or do some like that, I feel the motivation, and I can kind of rise to the occasion. I tend to work wow and diligently, and do good work in periods like that. Where pressure Peter doesn’t do as well, is when there’s a lack of pressure or when the back isn’t against the wall.

Justin:
So Pressure Peter can’t have a tendency to fall into kind of stagnation or just not really kind of driven, not putting out their best work. And I think, I have don’t like to admit it but that definitely applies as well. And so we’re going to talk about kind of the scenarios for that, but let’s introduce Secure Steven. So Steven does his best work and is most thoughtful work when his basic needs are covered and secure. So think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food, clothing, shelter, when the basics are covered, and you’re not worried where you’re going to get rent from next week or next month, and you’ve got some savings. That’s where Steven does his best work, and where he does his worse work is when it’s high pressure scenarios. When he is out of cash, when the rent’s due and he needs a hustle it up, when he doesn’t have any savings anymore. These are the spots where Steven falls down.

Joe:
Yeah, I would definitely say I fall more towards this end of the spectrum. Not all the way on the end, but definitely more conservative and sort of my personal finances and situation. I feel like I’m going to lose everything tomorrow. It’s definitely difficult for me to focus on work.

Justin:
All right, so let’s get into each of these and to kind of talk about the scenarios. Pressure. Peter as we said in his element when he’s feeling lots of pressure. One of the things, and this is generally a good position for Peter to be in, one of the things Peter needs to be careful about is survivor bias. So Peter is going to hear a lot of stories about people who’ve made it right, who were penniless, who had a negative bank account and came back from the brink and made a multimillion dollar business in three years and just crushing it. And those are the people that get interviewed on podcasts. Those are the people that are on shows. Those are the people that are out telling their story to an audience. But the people were, they were penniless or had a negative bank account and didn’t make it. Those are not the ones who shows big audiences, good stories to tell on podcasts. Those are the people you don’t hear from him and there’s plenty of those stories out there.

Joe:
Yeah, there’s plenty of those stories and there’s plenty of those stories that just never get reported ever. And I would say the majority of people that try it probably end up in that category, maybe not penniless, but they end up failing in some way, and it’s just such a failure that they never even report it. But the statistics don’t lie, and you can find out there that most small businesses fail, most side projects kind of don’t lead anywhere, and there’s a lot of that data out there to support that.

Justin:
Years ago, Joe, I was thinking about a podcast, I thought it’d be really interesting. It’s like it interviewed people, it’s like our interview show, and it interviews people like digital nomads that went to Chiang Mai, or Saigon, or Manila, or whatever, and they went out with a penny to prayer and had to go home tail between their legs because they “failed” in their digital nomad business. And I thought, wow, that’d be a real interesting story. The problem is, is that a lot of people don’t necessarily want to tell that story, and they’re really hard to kind of draw out of them. There is a show like that if people are interested, it’s called… it’s from gimlet media. It’s Without Fail. To the very high level, these are very large companies that sometimes had massive successes and then failed. A lot of times they’ve gone on to create other successes so they’re happy to get the publicity and the kind of air time but really interesting show at a very high level if you’re interested in checking that out.

Justin:
The second thing about Pressure Peter is, when Peter’s in the zone, so when his back’s up against the wall, and he’s feeling the heat, is almost out of money and he’s cooking, he’s doing really good work, whether it’s writing, or working on a project, or making phone calls, or whatever he’s doing and it’s going well, he should stay in that zone. That is where you want to be and it’s easy to let distractions kind of take you out or whatever but he should find a way to really lock in and stand the zone for as long as possible because a lot of times his best work is done there.

Joe:
So well, how can we do that? I mean, can you artificially make some pressure?

Justin:
Well No, this is when Pressure Peter already is feeling the pressure. So he’s in a situation where there is pressure, and he’s got the pressure right now-

Joe:
Right. [crosstalk 00:11:29].

Justin:
We’re going to talk about that, we’re going to talk about that next. But like just when you’re in the pressure, you’re in the zone, the idea is to stand there. And so one of the good things to do is to, if you’re let’s say writing, you got a room where you don’t have distractions, you don’t have people coming in and distracting all the time, so that when you’re kind of banging out that article, or that podcast, or whatever kind of work you’re doing, you’re able to just continue do it without distraction.

Justin:
So that’s helpful by setting aside, not actually, not worrying about time when you’re working. So for example, I’m speaking personally. If I happen to be on a roll at 12:30 at night, I’ll keep going. I’ll work till 2:00, or 3:00, or 3:30. I just let that go. I worry less about time. Now I have the luxury of doing that, I don’t have like a set job or whatever, but when it’s happening, I’ll let it happen. Conversely, if I sat down for like a two hour session, and I’m just 20 minutes in and it’s sucking and I’m not getting a word out or I’m not getting anything done, I’ll just walk away because it’s clear I can set aside all the time in the world but if it’s not working, it’s not working.

Joe:
Right.

Justin:
So that’s one of the things that pressure P can do is to stay in the zone. Another thing that I think pressure P should do is that, sometimes when he’s in the zone, he’s feeling like his work is amazing. So he’s doing whatever work, and he feels like he’s really productive, but having a partner, having an employee, having someone else check that work and make sure it’s high quality is a really good idea because you start to believe your own kind of hype; you are one of those that works well under pressure. So you think everything you put out is amazing under pressure and that’s not always the case. So it’s good to have that work double checked by someone who is not so into it and not on the deadline you’re on.

Joe:
Yeah, totally agree there. That’s definitely, especially if you’re on these kind of tight deadlines, and you’re using a high pressure environment to produce this sort of work, you want to make sure what you’re putting out is not just something that you’ve been rushed through or that you’re cramming to get done. So,

Justin:
All right, so let’s answer your question now, Joe. Pressure P is out of his element, right? He’s in this situation where he doesn’t have the financial pressure, he doesn’t have the time constraints that he had previously. He’s in a much more open, less pressurely environment. There are some things, some hacks, Pressure Peter can use to kind of put him back in the zone, and one of those things would be setting pressure goalposts. So you know by saying, look, I have this like five point kind of like project and need to work on. And then setting deadlines. The first goalpost is getting this piece of it done, and it should be done by June 28th, and the next one’s going to be July 30th or whatever. And setting these arbitrary like deadlines adds a little bit of pressure, time pressure for Peter to make sure he hits those.

Justin:
This is especially important when you have a much longer project. So I don’t know about you, but when I was in college I was a kind of person that would wait until last minute to finish reports, to finish projects I was working on. In the real world and after that there are projects that you simply can’t do last minute. You can’t do an all nighter and get the work done. It requires many months of work. And so this is a great thing for our Pressure Peter to use when you’re in a six-month project.

Joe:
Yeah. I’d also say I liked the goalposts idea when you are having success, right? So when you’re consistently having success, it might be hard for pressure Peter to find a way to put the pressure on himself, and these kinds of goalposts are the way to do it.

Justin:
I don’t think he’d do. He’s going to announce his deadlines. So by announcing deadlines, you’re adding pressure, and you can announce this deadline to your partner, to your employees, to your mastermind group, if you’re in one, to peers, family and friends if you have to. But by announcing your deadlines, you’re saying, I am going to get this done by this date. And so that helps add an element of pressure to yourself. Even when you don’t, it’s like an artificial deadline, but it’s now out there, and you’ve now committed to it and you don’t want to make yourself look bad. So you might be more likely to stick that deadline if it’s out there.

Joe:
Yeah. The only caveat I’ll give to this is that there’s, I forget the name of it, but there is that thing where people announced what they’re going to do and then don’t do it because they get the kind of feedback benefit already by just announcing it.

Justin:
Yeah. By saying, I’m going to do this, and you get the congratulations and the pats on the back, and you kind of do that as a dopamine, Hey, you say you’re going to do something and don’t end up doing it. Yeah, that’s bad. This isn’t that. I don’t think because you’re setting a deadline saying, I haven’t done this, I want to do this, I’m going to do it by this date, right? And so you’re not looking for positive feedback or reinforcement, you’re looking for other people to help hold you accountable on in your own mind to hold yourself accountable. I think that’s the difference.

Justin:
The other thing you can do is take Derek Siver’s Hell Yeah or No approach rather than taking on a whole bunch of projects because you’re like, look, I have plenty of time, I have plenty of money, what am I gonna focus on? You can take out a whole bunch of projects that ultimately don’t ever get finished because you don’t have the pressure, and you’re not actually getting it done. It’s just to say no to a lot of the smaller projects, a lot of things you’re mad about and just really focusing in on the things you really want to do.

Joe:
Yeah, no I like that approach, and I think people need to learn to say no to a lot more stuff. There was a thing way back when of having yesterday where you say yes to everything then seeing where it leads you. I don’t know if I could do that, but the Hell Yeah or No approach is definitely something that works.

Justin:
A total aside, Joe, I did that with my wife, my girlfriend at the time, but I did a yesterday with her. I was super worried about what I will end up doing. I think we did some silly stuff. I think I got like, I don’t know. Our feet scrubbed, and we did like the manicure, manicure, pedicure, or something. But it really, it wasn’t as bad. I was really worried about what she’s going to have me do that day, but it was actually pretty fun. It didn’t turn out too bad. And I think by giving her kind of I’ll do anything you say for me to do today, she was respectful and didn’t go too crazy. Just a little crazy. It’s fun.

Joe:
May be next time.

Justin:
You got nothing on that. You’re not saying nothing. You’re like, all right buddy. Next topic. Let’s move on with this. All right, let’s get into secure Steven. So secure Steven, again is the guy that’s much more comfortable when he’s got some money in the bank. He’s not a set on a timeline or a deadline. The deadline’s not soon approaching. He’s got plenty of time to get the project done. And so Steven is those element when he is got some security or lots of security. So here’s one of the concerns for Steven, is because he’s got the security or because he’s looking for it, Steven is the kind of guy that is more likely to want to save up more money and so put more money away. This is the kind of guy who says, maybe I need three years in my bank account before I start my business.

Justin:
Right? So one of the things here, I think that it would help Steven, is to think about the minimum security required. What’s the absolute minimum in the bank, the number of months of expenses, for example, that you need in the bank to get started. Maybe that’s 10 months, maybe your burn rate is $4,000 a month, 10 months that means you need $40,000 saved. But if 10 months we’ll do it when 18 months would be nicer. Of course, it’d be nicer. But what’s the absolute minimum you’re willing to get started with? I think that’s a good way to think of it.

Joe:
Yeah, I like this NSR tactic and having a kind of number and figuring that out, and you could absolutely do a calculation and there is somewhere between six and 12 months and I think every normal Secure Steven would agree that there’s somewhere to fall in there that if you can’t figure it out by then, it’s probably not going to happen.

Justin:
Yeah. You’ve run into these Stevens up before, right? Here we’re like, oh I want two years, I want three years, they’re talking about like I need to save more money before I start this project, and it’s either they don’t really love it, they just love talking about it or they’re overestimating what they’re MSR, their Minimum security Required really needs to be. Another advantage for Steven is that they have the opportunity to think bigger about their business, about their goals, about what they want to accomplish because they’ve got their Massel’s hierarchy kind of covered, definitely the base stuff covered. They can reach for the stars. They can reach higher up the ladder and really start to make, I think bigger money moves.

Justin:
So when you hear a secure Steven who has money in the bank, who’s got some time to work on and really delve in their project, and they talk about kind of like lower level goals, or like tweaking, or the kind of stuff that the Pressure Peter guys might be hustling for. I was thinking myself, no, no, you need to think bigger. If you’re putting that kind of runway aside and you’re building that kind of security for yourself to take a real stab at it, you need to take a real stab at it and not a little bite.

Joe:
Yeah, I would agree here. I think this is probably the biggest point under Secure Steven, is that, definitely if you’re going to have that kind of time runway available and you’re going to be spending your savings, you better be spending on something good, not just something to, oh, it’ll kind of replace my income.

Justin:
Yeah. Like a little hack, a little small business can be sold for five or low six figures. That’s probably not what Secure Steven needs to be focused on. Another thing is, Steven needs to worry about, at least a little bit, and it’s been part of their time focusing on replenishing their security. So whether that’s time or whether that’s money, whatever it is that kind of provides for their security and make sure that they knock a couple of months off, that they’re able to kind of add back to that. So, keep themselves in a kind of state of Securities, a state of comfortability to where they can keep that higher level, bigger picture thinking focused.

Joe:
Yeah. And if you’re working on a bigger project and it’s paying you well, then you should be able to save, especially if you’re getting better down to your MSR and not overspending.

Justin:
All right, so let’s talk about Steven when he is out of his element, when he doesn’t have the security, he’s got a crunch time deadline, not going to have the security of the runway that he normally needs to operate at a high level and think bigger picture. One of the things Steven can do is take a keep a part-time salary or contract work. A lot of times you hear, you need to go all in on a business and it’s better to go all in. And that’s definitely true for me, but that’s just not true for secure Steven. Right. So Steven keeping working with his current employment, see if you can go part-time or remote, seeing if he can keep two or three of the 10 contracts he currently has, and just keeping the two or three best highest paying ones makes a lot of sense.

Joe:
Yeah, I think this is a big lesson to be learned, is definitely say people who are Secure Stevens and quit their job too early or lose that very valuable client too early in the game before they’ve put themselves in a better situation to handle what they’re going to go out and do themselves.

Justin:
Another thing Steven can do is save up everything to get to that MSR, that minimum security required. And you hear about this a lot in other podcasts, or shows, or blogs where they talk about the entrepreneur mobile and don’t go out and buy the latest iPhone, use what works and save, save, save, put some money away from the runway. I mean that’s what they’re talking about here. And this is particularly helpful and useful for a Secure Steven. So this is a time, just a crunch time. If you determine that your runaway needed to start the business is $40,000 in the bank then and you’re at 22,000, you need to do whatever you can to get that extra $18,000. So whether that’s working part-time, taking on some additional contracts, working extra hours, but getting that extra $18,000 in the bank as soon as possible is key.

Joe:
Yeah. You and I used to call him cave days and I think that, that’s very applicable here is when you start to get down to it and you’re realizing you’re over spending, printing a personal budget in place and really cutting back and tightening the belt in your personal life will help you get to a better place so that you don’t feel that pressure and you can work with a little more added benefit.

Justin:
Cave days on, It’s funny. Yeah, it was like, let’s bust up the Netflix, or the video games, or let’s just kind of like chill for a week or two. Let’s save up some money and not go out and spend money and we’ll be fine and be able to put some money away. So, yeah, I mean that’s definitely something that Secure Steven can do.

Justin:
Another thing that Secure Steven can do is leverage their marriage or their business partnership. And here’s what I mean by that, right? A lot of times, particularly at the Pressure Peter’s, we’ll say, look, my husband or wife, or two partners are going to go out and start the business together. They’re going to quit their jobs and they’re going to go all in on this business. And that might work for pressure P, but a secure Steven’s like, not so quick. So what they can do is one of the partners can, the husband can start the business or the wife can start the business while the other one continues to work. Right? And bring in a salary, bring in some income to help supplement their partner. And I think that’s an effective way for… at least if one of the parties a Secure Steven, it’s a way for them to keep their marriage same and also keeps them cashflow coming in.

Joe:
I definitely liked the way you’re thinking here. It’s a little bit out of the box, but I would say that you need to have a strong personal relationship, and you need to have a real game plan to when you’re going to be able to supply income back to that other person before you take this step.

Justin:
Yeah, you started beating me up before we got on the show we’re kind of doing some prep. You’re like, what? I’m like, no, no. I’m not saying people should get married for this, but I’m saying that when people are married already and they both want to quit their high paying jobs to go to start up and take a risk, that can work, but I think it’s less stressful on probably the marriage and their business, honestly, if one of them can keep the income coming in. Now, you’re right, If over time, let’s say, a year goes by, two years, three years, five years, and that business really fails to launch and one party is earning the money and the other party’s flailing with a startup that never actually took off. I mean, probably re-evaluating that quarterly or annually as a couple probably makes sense.

Justin:
It’s the same thing for a business partnership. So even if you’re not married, but you have a business partner, having one person that’s kind of operational in the business, and then having the other person actually working on a high paying job or continue doing what they’re doing to bring in some cash flow, it might make sense. And you can get creative with that too. So let’s say that you’re starting this business partnership, maybe your friends and you say, look, I’m going to quit my high paying job to take this risk, right? And we want to do this, but one of us should keep their jobs. So let’s have you keep your job. I’ll do all the work in the business. We’ll split the business 50:50 but a portion of your pay goes to me, right? So you can actually work out deals like that, that makes sense.

Justin:
Now, obviously it’s going to be different for every person. Maybe you split the business equity differently, maybe you split their pay differently, but situations like that can work. All right buddy. Let’s wrap up this episode. Couple things I wanted to point out. Just remember that this is a spectrum and I think the listeners should think about kind of where they fall. I mean, no one’s all out a Pressure Peter and no one’s all out a Secure Steven, but they fall somewhere between the two. And I kind of thinking about what their approach to their businesses and what their approach to security and safety as I think makes sense.

Joe:
Yeah. And I think you can mix and match characteristics of each too. So you might find that as well. That’s some things apply to you and some things don’t.

Justin:
I think it’s also important to make sure that your flourishing kind of in your element of where you fall, but to be mindful as well that there are risks and things you can screw up even when you’re in your element. So for Pressure Peter, for example, making sure they’re having their work checked, right? You think you’re doing great work, but are you really, have someone else kind of review it. For secure Steven, thinking, Oh yeah, I’m going to save up a bunch of money and get started once I have five years in the bank. Well, there’s an opportunity cost of them waiting around to get out that much savings and not just looking at the kind of minimum security required.

Joe:
Yeah, keep in mind the MSR and make sure that you are realistic about what you really need to get started with.

Justin:
Also for Pressure Peter, know that it’s not all flowers and sunshine by going penniless and then having that turn around. There are plenty of people that go penniless and stay there, at least for some period of time, so they’re not all just these amazing success stories. Even though that’s mostly what you’re going to hear in podcasts interviews, you’re going to hear in blog posts from people who’ve then gone on to have a success. I think it’s also important to remember that there are people that are successful that are both personality types or either personality type. You can be as Secure Steven in a lack of security situation to be successful just like you can be a Pressure P and you’ll not have pressure on you and still be successful. So there are ways to make it work. And I hope some of our advice, our tips here will help our listeners do just that.

Speaker 2:
You’ve been listening to the empire podcast. Now some news and updates.

Justin:
At your talking news and updates, we’ve been working on this for quite a while. We just launched our 2019 state of the industry report and I’m really proud of the work our team has done in the data they’ve collected and that analysis they put into this report. I think it’s fantastic. I know that other people have put together some kind of like wrap ups of scraped listings and data that’s from a bunch of other marketplaces. What I think kind of separates ours is this is actual sales data. So we’re not just talking about what a business was listed for and then taken off the market. You don’t know if it’s sold, you don’t know what it sold for. These are the businesses that were listed, we’re talking about how long they were listed for, we’re talking about the actual sales price after they were listed, what they went for. And I think this is the kind of information you just can’t get anywhere else.

Joe:
Yeah, this is a huge step. I think I’ve been wanting us to do something like this for a number of years and I really do think now that we have the data in-house to confidently say this. And when I talk to sellers on the phone and they talk about some of the other industry ports that you referred to, I always point out that a lot of that data is not something that they own, not something that they’re getting from there, just assuming that these web pages out there that say a sale happened or something that happen but they’re not actually… that broker’s not personally involved with it. So this is stuff that comes directly from our marketplace and our marketplace alone, and Greg and the marketing team did an awesome job on it, Alex did a great job on getting the intro done and hey man, you did a great job on overseeing the whole thing. So I think it’s an awesome idea and I can’t wait to do it again in 2020.

Justin:
Pressure Peter pulls through. Definitely. I started putting deadlines on gray cause I think they started to get extended. I think that put the fire on him to get it done and he delivered. Another thing, we’re hiring a content manager, so this is a really important, I think person on the marketing team. Doesn’t mean someone that obviously is writing and doing some content for us, but also editing some of the content from our content production system, which Greg we’ll love to train this person on and get them up to speed with. So I mean, I see this being a really important role with us over the next couple of years and so I’m really excited about the applicants that are applying for the job.

Joe:
Yeah, it’s going to be a big role. I love the way Greg has scripted that up and made that kind of a central part of the marketing team. I do want to add that we are still looking for a Ruby on Rails Engineer, so that is also up on the careers page, which you can find on our website. So if you know anyone or you are a rails engineer, please do apply.

Justin:
Cool. And I’ll put links to both of those in the show notes @empireflippers.com/allin. I also want to mention some upcoming conferences we have. We have our team going to Affiliate World Europe. That’s going to be in Barcelona July 8th through 11th. Neither you nor I are going to be there, but we’re going to have some of our team members there. That’ll be really exciting and then we’ve got a crew go into the DCx Budapest event July 18th through 19th in Budapest. That’s just for Dynamite Circle members, friends of our dynamitecircle.com so if you’re a member of the community over there and you’re heading to DCX Budapest make sure to say hi to the Empire Flippers crew.

Joe:
Yeah, we’d love to get over there to Europe, but it is on the other side of the earth for me. So when you’re coming from Asia, it’s a long way to go.

Justin:
All right buddy. Let’s do listeners’ shouts ultimately as the indulgent ego boosting social proof segment. First top, buddy we got a five star iTunes reviews from Fillioux, says web publisher must listen to this podcast. I’m a web publisher there since 2003 and so far each podcast was informative to a pro like me, the blogs from running empire flippers and other guests, but the host pushed the conversation where it becomes really interesting, not just shameless plugs, blurring the lines between PR talking inside our talk. After each podcast I just feel I got something that I can take action on. Well, thanks Fillioux, we really appreciate it.

Justin:
Also got to shout from Liz Rad from Matt and Liz. They spoke to Alex, our Director of Sales from the team about a site that’s making $2,300 a month on autopilot and sold within just a few hours of getting listed in the marketplace, so they have a nice chat about that. They’ve got a really interesting content. They talk about a lot of businesses that are being sold kind of across the industry and so we’ve kind of connected with them and are connecting up with them doing some content together.

Justin:
Jay gave us a compliment on the 2019 industry reports, I just read this yesterday. Amazing value, greatly appreciate you putting this together. We greatly appreciate you. Appreciate you Jay. Thanks for the shout.

Justin:
Crypt and Natural said Super Singapore from Empire Flippers 2019 State Of The Industry Report for those interested in buying and selling online businesses. Appreciate the shout on Twitter.

Justin:
And then there’s a question from some on Twitter. Jesse Hanley who we know. It’s kind of curious on both sides. Do you guys have your vetting process public anywhere or documented? I replied to him but I’ll mention it here on the show as well. We talk about our vetting process kind of in general terms. We vet both the seller, the site’s traffic, the earnings, we talk kind of generally what that’s about but we don’t have it written out or documented for public consumption. And the reason is, is that if we get into the nitty gritty on the exact things we check, when we check them, how deep we go into checking them, they could cause real problems for people looking to game the system. Right? So people are like, oh well they check here, but if I just push it a little further, they won’t check there, could end up being bad for us and ultimately our customers.

Joe:
Yeah. Our goal is to get the top quality listings on our marketplace. And so we’ve realized that if we go ahead and reveal how we do that, that somebody’s gonna reverse engineer that and use it against us. And so that’s just something we’re unfortunately not able to be 100% transparent on.

Justin:
I’ll tell you, there’s a whole bunch of reasons we won’t list it on our marketplace and they generally revolve around, the first being compliance, right? If we can’t verify the information or we found the information to be dodgy in some way, we definitely won’t list those business on our marketplace. There’s another reason like the sellability, if we just don’t think that business is sellable for some reason, maybe we’ve listed businesses like that before really struggled or if they’re just, we know that based on the kind of like markers in this business, it’s not very sellable, that we probably won’t list that either. And the third reason are businesses that are kind of like outside of businesses remship, porn gambling. There are certain industries that we don’t do business on for a number of reasons.

Joe:
Yeah, there’s definitely some objective measures minimums that we use that are on our cellular site page and you can look those up. And like John said, some categories that we won’t go. And I will add one other caveat here and that’s when a seller is very difficult to work with. So we have a rule, don’t do business with assholes and we definitely hold that true, every time we violated, it’s always come back to bite us. And you know, one of the things we try to make sure is that people are really looking to sell, not just testing the waters. People are really willing to go through the entire process of working with buyers, making sure they have access to everything, answering questions. And we just get some sellers who while their businesses fine, they’re just not really in the right head space and we have to decline those as well.

Justin:
I honestly, I always feel weird. Anyone listening to this, right? And they’re like wondering, they’re like and they don’t do business with assholes. How would they think that I’m an asshole? And if you’re asking yourself that question probably not, right? Because you’re self aware enough to be like concerned about that, then you’re probably not the person that we’re talking about.

Justin:
We got another nice mentioned on Reddit. Someone put a post on Reddit talking about a multiyear case study where they end up selling their business with us on Empire Flippers. It’s like a 20 something part case study. If you’re one a real like meat and potatoes behind the scenes, look at a business like that, crushed it and ultimately had a nice exit. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1:
That’s it for episode 183 of the Empire Flippers Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We back soon with another show. You can find the show notes for this episode or more @empireflippers.com/allin and make sure to follow us on Twitter @EmpireFlippers. See you next time. Bye Bye everybody.

Speaker 2:
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Empire podcast with Justin and Joe. Hit Up empireflippers.com for more. That’s empireflippers.com. Thanks for listening.