EU240: Replay: Ezra Firestone – Work/Life Balance and Success

eCommerce Uncensored

Ecommerce marketing master, Ezra Firestone is on the show! Ezra & the guys talk about everything and anything ecommerce, personal life and overall entrepreneur/lifestyle balance!

This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thanks for joining us on another episode of Ecommerce Uncensored is episode number 165. My name is Kevin Monell and I’m here with

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: And we have a pretty exciting episode today. I think we have a true one special guest we’ve been trying to get on for a while and it just hasn’t worked and we finally were able to get them on and I’m pretty excited about it.

Jason: Yeah, we, um, we’re definitely going to have him on again. We were talking to him for about an hour 45 minutes before we started the podcast.

Kevin: So the podcast itself, I felt, uh, we could have. Well, there were so many more directions I wanted to go into that we couldn’t get into. So we’re going to have him on again when both of our schedules permit.So we’re going to be joined. I don’t know if I actually, in the beginning part of this episode announced who he was, it’s Ezra Firestone, he’s got, um, uh, you know, eight, eight figure cosmetic brands. He’s building, he’s got an info product and smartmarketer.com. And he’s got a, uh, a software that he used that he that’s built into Shopify.

Jason: And he owns a big, giant yeah. The cosmetic company. And if you’re in e-commerce, you know, Ezra Firestone is. So without. Let’s get into it.

Kevin: Hello, Ezra. It’s great to have you. Thanks for your being on our show.

Ezra: Hey man. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I feel like we just did a podcast.

Jason: We’ve been trying to get you on the show, man, for how.

Ezra: A long time, you guys reached out a long time ago. And I actually really liked the, I see you in my Instagram feed. Instagram is the platform that I use as a social media consumer. And so like when I am consuming content, it’s Instagram feeds or Instagram TV, I do TV. Um, and so I’ve seen you guys, I, you know, Facebook knows I’m e-commerce person, I’m an e-commerce person. So they put, you know, put e-comm stuff in my feed. And I think I saw you. I ended up following you. It’s like, oh cool. E-commerce content. And then every now and again, I’ll see one of your bits or one of your little clips and you just have a good vibe, you know, you’re hanging out, talking shit. Pardon my language. I mean, we have

Jason: half the time. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing, to be honest

Kevin: with you for the first way we got connected. I think we did a podcast. Like when we first start. You know, episode, I want to say episode 30, we talked about like some of our favorite tools that we like to use on Shopify. And we had just, we had talked about Zipify one click upsells, and we had tagged you in one of our posts. That’s how this whole relationship started. And then we, we got our Cleevio connection and we were going to Klaviyo conference. It’s been a long time. Columbia is supposed to record it at the Klaviyo conference that I then didn’t show up to.

Ezra: Yeah. Yes. You did.

Jason: Matter of fact, you know, it’s funny because we we’ve, uh, I know you use Klaviyo for some of your businesses and, um, we became pretty friendly with them. They, they sponsor the show. Um, we go, we go to Boston every year. And, uh, w one of the girls came up to her. She’s like, yeah. You know, as he was not speaking, we’re like, huh, we hadn’t, we had no idea. And she’s like, yeah, something else came up. And they were bummed, man. They really, they were really looking forward for,

Ezra: I would have loved to do it. I’ve been working with them. I was actually in talks to do 2020, and then I guess that’s canceled now, you know? Um, from what I understand, we, we go over here. I don’t know if it is, I don’t want to put any rumors out there. This could be total rumor mill, but it seems like. It seems unlikely. Right? When is it supposed to be like this summer? September? No, it’s

Kevin: usually in September. So

Jason: didn’t they change it to August or something? I don’t know.

Kevin: I don’t remember. I don’t know.

Jason: Well, I

Ezra: hope to see you guys there.

Kevin: We had this awesome conversation before we started and I’m like, oh, this is great content. We’re like, we didn’t start yet. And then

Jason: it’s just like, stop recording right now. Go

Ezra: shop. Well, that was confidential stuff, you know? Get out there, but I’m happy to kind of rehash any of that, that we feel like, you know, the listeners would be interested in the valuation stuff, whatever happened to boom with coronavirus, any of that stuff.

Jason: Yeah. So I think. You know, as they’re a, you’re obviously, um, it’s funny because for the last few years, like, like you, we’ve obviously followed you, um, you know, you said you you’ve seen our podcast and your feed on Instagram and we’ve we followed you. And I was just telling Kevin before, um, you’re pretty open about your numbers with Boom. Are you okay with, if I, if I bring these what I’m about? Okay. So like one day. I see you like yeah. You know, we’re doing 25 million with Boom. And then literally at the next year, you’re like, yeah, we’re doing 75 mil. Boom, my huh, what the hell just happened?

Ezra: So what I realized. So, so 75 million is cumulative revenue that boom has generated in the last four years. We’re actually up over a hundred now. So that was 25 million a year in top line revenue, which by the way, everybody wants to come out myself included and tell you about how much top line revenue. That shit doesn’t really matter. What matters is how much money do you keep? How much profit do you have? Top line is sexy and it gets people’s attention. And as someone who is going out there trying to get people’s attention and get them to pay attention to me, I use this sort of system that my wife would really love for me to have a different analogy, but this is the best I can come up with. This is the chocolate covered carrot. So it’s all covered carrot. I used the chocolate to get your attention, right? It’s like, Hey, I’ve been making twenty-five million dollars a year with my company, or I made a hundred million dollars in revenue or. Four and a half years my Shopify store. And then when you actually come in and you want to come in, you want to make money. And that’s how I get your attention because you won’t pay attention to, Hey, the real way to actually be successful in business is to have integrity and put out content that your community is going to be engaged with and make the best product in the market. And, and, you know, do do sophisticated conversion rate optimization and up sell, cross, sell, like all the stuff that is the sort of technical tactical. The carrot, the vegetables that I teach aren’t, isn’t usually what I lead with because I’ve found that leading with something that is a little more sensation. Works to get people’s attention in this environment that we’re in, where everybody is bombarded with content and ads. And like you, you need a little sensationalism in my opinion, in order to get someone who doesn’t know about as attention. And so that’s why I kind of use those bigger numbers. Even though you look at boom. We do very well. We might make three to 4 million a year in profit, which is in the best business I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t sound as sexy as, Hey, we did 25 million in revenues. That’s kind of why I lead with.
Jason: Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting because Kevin and I were talking to you about, um, this, this little side business that we have, and we say side business, but it really is more than a side business to become that yet. Right. And like, you know, seven, seven months. To do you know, multi-million dollars already. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing because it’s like, you’re a little kid, you know, when, when this is like the first time you’ve had a business that is doing these kinds of numbers and you’re seeing, like we said, $6,000 a day, $8,000 a day, and it’s, it’s almost unfettered.

Ezra: And you can’t sleep and all you can do swirling in your head all the time, the things you could do and the sort of the energy that, that comes with that success. I, every time a new venture works, I have that same feeling and every time a new venture fails, I have the opposite of that feeling, but it’s, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s so cool to, to hear that that’s that’s going on for you guys. And it’s also like how many years have you been in the trenches? How many years have you been banging it out and making it happen? Running ads? To have your own offer that is converting. And it’s like, oftentimes not a function of, obviously you knew what to do, right. Oftentimes it’s a function of that, like, uh, a market that hasn’t, that has not gotten a particular message that resonates with them yet or done as well. And then you come in and you just happen, like with boom it’s like what I’m selling. Everybody’s sells cosmetics. You know what I mean? But what makes boom unique is I just, I kind of hit this site, Geist of this right. Message to the right group of people at the right time. And that is both skill and yay for me. And I’m a smart marketer and all that stuff, but it’s also luck. I just kind of, I got lucky that it just worked, you know? And so I’m not trying to downplay your success, but I am no,

Jason: uh, as, or, you know, one thing that attracted us to you was, you know, you talk a lot, a lot. You know, you know, the marketer, as they say, grind, grind, grind, he’s like, oh, he’s working, always working, always working. And then like you hear, you know, uh, other, these other successful people. And then like when you become successful, you realize. That all that noise is not really how it is on the other side. You know, we were talking about like Facebook ads, if you can get a 1.3, 1.4 ROAS return, you can, you can build a multi-million dollar business literally in a year. And yeah. And that’s the kind of thing that I think that I’ve learned being on the other side of things, you know, watching guys like you who have always been like, you know, I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’ve done this and I’ve done that. And then like, we’ve been, you know, just like everybody else, we’ve been like, kind of like bummed that we haven’t done yet. And then you realize that you’re exactly right, man. Like we knew what to do, but it just came down to having the right offer in front of the right people in a market that isn’t oversaturated.

Ezra: I mean, he’s gotta take a lot of swings and, you know, look, dude, I’ve been a e-commerce entrepreneur since 2005. Do you know how much shit I’ve had that if that has failed? Most of it, most of it. Do you know how long it took me to make my first million dollars in a. Seven years. I mean, seven years of trying and I’m talking early twenties trying, which is before I understood how to not hustle, grind, sacrifice, and work all day before I understood that it was a marathon and not a sprint before, you know, back when I had, I was, I, I never made it to college. So I wasn’t in college. I was working a, a job to try to pay my bills. I was working at a yoga studio. I was doing some e-commerce consulting, but all the rest of my time, I was trying to make businesses work. And so, yeah. I have all these wonderful success stories, but that’s only after. I don’t know, 15 years in the game, you know what I mean? And I feel like what happens with people is they, uh, you know, what do they say? Comparison is the thief of joy is some, some to the effect of that, right? It’s like, and it’s so hard not to compare yourself with everybody in your Instagram feed because you’re seeing your peers and you’re seeing people’s success. And you’re seeing everybody putting out the best version of. When it’s like, look, we all have our fears, our anxieties, our struggles, our struggles with our physical body, our mental, emotional struggles, our struggles in our relationship. Like we all are experiencing the spectrum of emotion from sadness to happiness. And like, this is part of being human. And then what we broadcast to the world is the spectrum that we, you know, how we want to be perceived and how we want others to perceive us. And then I’m looking at that and I’m judging myself in relationship to the shit that I see out there, but it’s like, look. Everybody is human. Everybody’s having the same set of experiences and really what’s going to dictate your own, um, happiness in life. Isn’t it. How, whether or not you are successful. Look, there’s a level at which you have to provide for your family, especially as men, right? We received the conditioning that if we are not able to provide, we are not valuable and that is so heavy, heavily ingrained in us as guys it’s, it’s ingrained in us as heavily as women believe that their value is about how they look, their youth, their beauty, their ability, their sex appeal like that. You know, if women don’t feel like they have. At least in the eyes of society, they don’t feel as valuable. Well, turns out that if you can figure out how to make enough money, to be able to be able to eat when you need to be able to kind of pay your baseline bills and not be in a crazy amount of debt, which is actually very hard to do, but like, let’s say you make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Pre-tax in this in Western society in most states in America, let’s just go with America. Adding more money on is not going to make you happy money can buy you comfort. I can tell you having gone from poor to now being one of the richer people I know, and I’m talking about I’m sweating all crazy age. I’m talking about, you know, hand me down clothes, school, lunches, power going out, uh, water, getting turned off the whole, you know, not having means as a kid to now having means the, um, Your actual happiness is not dictated by how much money you make, even though you think it’s going to be different. Why don’t you make more money? But then all of a sudden you make money and you realize you have all the same problems that you have before. It does not fix any of your relationships. It doesn’t really fix anything. It allows you to afford yourself more comfort, but if you’re not doing. On yourself to, you know, do your best to show up to your, um, social life in a way that is fulfilling to show up to your intimate relationships in a way that feels good and put attention on those to take care of your body. Like if you’re not doing all that other shit, you’re, it doesn’t matter how, how much money you make. You’re your host. I mean, how many people are rich and miserable and shackled to their jobs that they don’t like and slogging it out every day, just to make the money. It’s like, I would much rather. Poor and doing something I enjoy than rich and doing some shit. I don’t like, I mean, I don’t know.

Jason: No dude like that’s, but I think, I think people need to hear that, man, because you know, Thai Reese, um, I don’t know th the, the model, he, you know, he said, he said being rich, it’s just, it just makes things more convenient. He said, that’s it. He’s like, I can get on a plane. I own plane. Yeah. I can buy stuff for my house whenever I want it. Yeah. I can go away whenever I. That doesn’t make me

Ezra: happier, adds more complexity to, I will tell you the pressure of being an entrepreneur and having it all riding on you. And you’ve got to pay people’s salaries and you’re responsible for this thing being successful and every, you know, and if it goes wrong, you’ve got way more to lose. Like there’s a, there’s an added pressure that people don’t talk about with, with, with great, greater success. That is very intense because as things get bigger, the upside of the. Of running them gets flattens out, but the downside spikes, right? Because like, let’s take boom, for example, $20 million a year plus business, a couple million in profit. If this, if I have a down year and I lose money, I personally go bankrupt because I am, I’m not funded by anyone. Right? Like I’m funding this thing out of. I bootstrapped it all the way right now. I’ve got money and savings and I’ve been smart and we can talk about how to manage money. And I have a lot of ideas and thoughts about that from having started with no money and got to where I am now and made every mistake in the book and not paying my taxes and all that shit. But. Uh, and alarm did along the way, but I will tell you that, like everybody is so fascinated with scale. They want to get bigger. They want the $10 million business, and it would blow your mind the amount of eight and even nine figure business owners that I talk to who just wished they could go back to when their business was $2 million a year, half a million in profit, three employees, low stress, because what’s interesting is as you scale, the amount of profits. Dwindles your top line revenue goes up, but you make less profit for the money that you make. And the risk of it all gets bigger. So I actually feel like, you know, I figure my viewpoint and then I will, I will let you take as much, or just keep on this tangent, which is my viewpoint is. The goal in business as wealth creation, it’s to enjoy ourselves to make good products that serve the world to be profitable. But at the end of the day, also kind of the overarching goal is to create wealth and to use that wealth. And I also label that as resource to use that resource. Uh, to take care of our family, to take care of our close in community and then use it for causes in the world that we find noble. I got 60 hippies to support who raised me, I to take care of them, I got to take care of them. I got, my wife has visions of things she’d like to do with our land. And I here in upstate New York, I have some other causes in the world that I find. Um, you know, I have desire to support such as water preservation and things like that. And I figure, I need to make about a hundred million dollars in liquid. Revenue, which are liquid profit, which is you need to make a lot more money to get that kind of liquidity, uh, in order to achieve the goals that I have now, if I don’t make those goals fine, but this is what I’m shooting for. And it turns out that wealth creation, when you really start to learn about it, You don’t actually get rich from running cashflow businesses. The way that you make money, true money is actually the, the sale of assets. If you look at our parents’ generation, my parents, baby boomers, they understood this in terms of what they did was they took their 401ks. They invested in real estate assets. They let those assets, um, appreciate over decades, and then they sold those assets for more wealth.
And then they use that wealth to pass down to future generations, to invest in other assets. Well, the way that I’m doing this is by building brands and. Uh, operating those brands and living off them, but then ultimately most of the money that I will ever make from any brand that I have is the day that I sell it. That’s where that’s where you really make money. And so I’m focused on how do I create the most valuable asset possible? And I figure I got 15 years at this pace, right? I’m going to get back to the $2 million a year business. I was talking about a second ago. I got 15, 15 years left at the pace that I’m going. Ish, maybe only 10. And so in order to achieve my goals, I need assets that are as valuable as they can possibly be. Well, what makes an asset valuable? Number one, profit, how much profit does it have? That is going to be a huge factor in the valuation of that asset. I’ll give you an example of a traditional e-commerce business under a million dollars a year. Let’s say it makes a million a year in revenue, $200,000 in profit. It’s kind of an average e-comm business of that size. That business is going to sell for between a one and a four for. Multiple of its yearly profit. So if it makes $200,000 a year, it’ll sell out the most for 800,000 liquid capital at the least for about 200,000, well, $200,000 a year, $200,000 at one time is different than $200,000 spread over 12 months. Right? What you can do with that kind of liquidity is different. You have access to it’s why private equity that the private equity business model is simple. You take. You buy businesses, you leave the operating teams in place. For the most part, you let the, the seat you by 90% of a CEO founders. You give them a security, you back it financially, you leave them in their team, operating it. You support them with the areas of the business that they are. Don’t understand financial strategy, supply chain, logistics, whatever it happens to be. You let that grow over three or four years, and then you sell it. That is the highest return. Business class in America is private equity. And so what I’ve learned is that I’m actually a builder and that what I need to become to reach my goals is a buyer. And I can’t build businesses fast enough in order to, I mean, let’s say I get an, if I build another one, like, boom, I’ve done it, right. I’m like close, maybe 30% of the way there to my goal with just the one asset that I’ve been working on over 10 years, I got Zipify now also worth a good amount of money.

Jason: So that’s one click. I also just want everybody to know we use it all. Yeah,

Ezra: thank you. Um, so anyway, let me get back to this, which is when I’m, I’m going to take, I’m going to take the swings while I have the energy and shoot for the moon, but ultimately the business that I think I will operate in my late forties, fifties, et cetera, is going to be a business that would probably do a couple million dollars a year in revenue, 500 to 600 in profit, low overhead, low complexity, good lifestyle model. And I think that if. At any level have created a business of any kind. Let’s say you don’t have the crazy goals that I have of wealth creation, and you’re just, you just don’t want to work a job that you don’t like. You want to have something that’s yours that you get to, you know, have agency in and autonomy in and really be the person who’s running it. If you can create a business that creates over a hundred thousand dollars a year in profit, that you don’t work in more than 40 hours a week and that you have full control. And, and you are enjoying yourself, doing good in the world, making a good product and you’re profitable. You’ve won this game. You may not think it because you’re sold that you need the biggest business and the most, the most employees and the biggest office space and all this bullshit that is actually overhead complexity, stress. You’ve really, really, really won the game. If you’re making over a hundred thousand dollars a year in your own operation of any kind, and you’re not overworked because most people who have that big giant business are stressed out of control. They’re overworked, they’re under slept. They’re fucked. And so. I really just want to stress that, like what I’ve learned and look, I am playing the game of big business owner and I’m attempting to do it. And I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job in a way that is in support of my lifestyle. Not at the expense of my lifestyle, which is why I’m always talking about, you know, really set boundaries around your work life. If you can’t do it in the time that you gave yourself, it’s not worth doing. If you can’t delegate it, don’t do it. Like don’t, don’t sacrifice yourself for the success of the brand because ultimately you will burn out. So. And what ways? I don’t know how it, oh, I got on that tangent because, because people are talking about, they want the biggest business possible. And I think that is a misguided goal. Yeah.

Kevin: Well, I think the biggest thing as far as goal wise goes for me is that I’ve learned is like the, like you said, the overall wellness, because I was fucking lunatic. Like Jason always bust my balls about it. I always had to be in front of my computer. Cause I was like an hourly agency guy, you know, I owned an agency. So it’s like, if I wasn’t at the computer, I wasn’t making money. And you know, Jason at one point had. Convinced me to go to my kid’s soccer game. I’m like, what’s going on.

Jason: If you’re going to, if you’re not going to do those things, go work for somebody because then you can’t do them.

Kevin: But if you’re out on the street for you, because what I’ve seen from you is, is the complete opposite. Like you see the Gary V’s of the world, 18 hours a day. Hustle all the time. We’re like, okay, I got that side of things. And then I got the Ezra side of things who was like, you know, in the middle of the day, just making a nice coffee with his wife or like, it can a weird salad or some kind of weird dishes and doing his jujitsu. And I’m like, wow, that seems like the way to go with this. Like just having that overall wellness, social interaction with my family. And that that’s really the goal of this.

Ezra: Yeah. Yeah. And like, look, I am optimizing for happiness because I, you know, I lost my business partner last year. Boom. Like that you don’t fucking know how long you have.
You really don’t. And I have my team do this thought experiment of like, let’s say you died tomorrow. And I know it’s heavy and I know people don’t want to confront this, but like, For sake of argument, say you got, uh, you know, diagnosed with some rare form of cancer and you only had, you know, a week to live. Dude. Were you happy with the last three months? Like, are you living a life that is bringing you fulfillment? Because if you’re not, you’ve missed the point. Look, I mean, we can all grind and sacrifice and hustle and like, Hey, there’s some times you got to do it right. If I’m launching a new, if Zipify is rolling out a new feature, I might have a week where I put in 10 to 12 hour days to really try to get that over the line. I am not against. I came from the bottom and I worked my ass off to get here. Like I understand hard work, but I also understand that at the end of the day, hard work for hard work sake is not worth it. Like I want to be enjoying my life. While I’m living it, right. Because you don’t know. Cause you’re here.

Kevin: Jason has to convince me to take money out of the business because I’ve gone so long with like just, you know, providing for everybody else. You know, the middle of last year we were like, or the agency was blowing up and it was just full of stress taking care of all the employees, the payroll. And I’m like, yeah, having that little money in the bank, it’s just. It just feels good. You know, it’s like a little security blanket. It’s like, we gotta get some money.

Jason: We got to enjoy it. We got to enjoy it though. We can’t just leave it there and watch it and just say, okay, now let’s just keep growing it. And let’s just keep living the same way we’re living.

Ezra: Well, one, one analogy that I give for this is my, um, My neuroses around a fridge full of beverages. So I saw that we saw the video. So it’s like, look, you know, you don’t have to think, oh, I gotta go buy a boat. No, for me, it’s like, when I grew up, you know, I’d watch MTV cribs and I’d see that they’d open. You know, people would open their fridge and they have Lunchables and they have all these beverages. I opened my fridge. I never saw any of that stuff. So I was thought when I make it, I’m going to have a fridge that’s filled with beverages and this. I feel the sh I will stop my fridge, sparkling water, coconut water, every kombucha. And I opened the fridge and every day I feel like I made it, like I got I’ve I’m ha like I’m experiencing just a little even doesn’t cost much to fill your fridge full of beverages. But for me it does something and has me feel like I’m doing well. I’ve gotten there, like every day I have that feeling. I have my espresso machine that’s at $3,000 espresso machine people think that is insane. An insane amount of money to spend on an espresso machine. But yeah. I drink an espresso every morning, I derive so much pleasure and satisfaction and joy out of the whole experience of grinding it in Tampa. I got re it’s a ritual and I mean, look, you might spend three grand over two years at Starbucks. I never go to Starbucks. I spent it on this one thing and every day I get enjoyment out of that. And so I’m really a fan of finding things that are going to bring you pleasure in the moment and incorporating those into your daily routine because. Why not, you know, well, you know, it’s, father-in-law, my

Kevin: father-in-law came. I’m sorry, Jason. My father-in-law came in from Russia in 1975, with $10 in his pocket and a baby. And he created a really successful, pretty successful retail business in the Bronx. And now I sorta got, every time every cabinet you opened in his house has some kind of expensive alcohol in it or wine or scotch. He doesn’t even drink that much. And. It’s just his thing. Like he just likes to be able to go to the, go to the store, my ex expensive bottle of scotch. And when he brings it home, he feels good when he puts it in the cabinet, even though he doesn’t drink it, it’s just his thing. It’s the same kind of concept.

Jason: I’ve got a funny story for you. I got to get this in. So Kevin, right? I always make fun of him. Like, oh, I know Kevin, you want to run back to your computer. You want to stare at your computer for 12 hours a day. I get it. I understand for me, you know what? My thing is, my thing. If I want to go play golf at one o’clock I can do it. If I can go, you know, that’s for me, I don’t mind working at nine o’clock at night, but I want to be able to, at one o’clock in the afternoon, if I want to go play golf, I want to be able to do that. And that’s the kind of business I want to build. I don’t the agency to me. Like, it just, it locks me down and it just drives me crazy.

Kevin: I want him to worry I’m coming up. I’m coming over to the dark side.

Ezra: I also discovered that there was a level of escapism that I was using my businesses for. And it was like, if there was something going on in my life that I didn’t want to confront, I could always escape. It was always, I always had the convenient excuse of, well, the business needs my attention. Wait, do you have kids? You know? Yeah. I mean, see you have kids, man. I found that I was willing to use my business as an excuse to non confront shit in my life. That then when I came back, it was still there and I was like, okay, well, this is a bad strategy. I come back, it’s still hanging there waiting for me. So it’s like, well, fuck I better. I might as well just confront that shit now and not run to the business to hide because it does not productive. Then when I’m working in the business. Cause I’m really actually thinking about this other thing that I’m trying to hide from him. So I had to, like, I kind of learned how to play these mind games with myself of like, okay, am I working? Because I’m like focused and putting attention on something, that’s actually in the direction of. Um, you know, motion of the business, or am I just trying to not do some, like, for example, we are, we have to move. Um, we are moving in the middle of the pandemic aren’t we gotten kicked out of this house. It’s a rental. So we’re packing all of our shit up once. Like, well, you know, we got a month to pack our stuff. It’s two weeks in, I have not packed anything I’ve conveniently had work to do cycle is it’s like this mental trap that, uh, is available. That even if you are aware of. Still catches you, right? Like I’m aware of my behavior pattern here, which is I’m non confronting this moving cycle by working. And even though. I can sit back and, you know, armchair psychologist understand that it’s still not, it’s still happening to me. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s kinda, it’s, it’s an eternal process. I do that

Jason: when the baby, when the baby cries and my wife wants me to grab him, I’m like, I gotta go. I gotta go work. I mean, I got, somebody has to pay the bills. You know,

Ezra: it’s whenever we need it. It

Jason: is man. And, um, but no, man, I, you know what I like about conversations like this dude is like, you know, everybody on the outside. Right. And when I say that, I mean like the guys who are still like grinding it out and struggling, and you know, like you said, I’ve been in this game for 17 years. Kevin’s been in it forever, you know? It’s so different on the other side. And what I love about conversations like this is like, you know, you’re a really successful guy, Kevin and I are like, kinda like just getting there, you know, multimillion dollar business

Ezra: coming up. If you’ve created an agency. Is, you know, is doing over a million dollars a year in revenue. Like that is an achievement. Most people know most. So this is the thing about like, you see someone like me and you’re like, oh fucking whatever. But dude, a million dollar bill, you realize most local businesses, every local business that you shop from, they only do a couple hundred grand a year tops. Right? So you have a, you have a business off your couch that is bigger than. 95% of businesses in America. I mean, it’s like, it is a real achievement to have created what you’ve created and it’s so easy to downplay our own success and look at the thing we made and be like, ah, you know, I don’t like it for these reasons. Everything has its flaws. Everything has its parts that are hard about it. Things that we wish were different. Like, you know, with, for me with services, I could never figure out how to work with clients. I just was terrible at that. Um, and so it’s like, but what you guys have built, you know, a following in the e-commerce world, a successful podcast that people listen to and get value from an agency that pays your bills. And that makes a million dollars plus in a year. I mean, That is for real, you know, most people don’t create that. I’m just saying. Yeah, no. I mean, and, and it’s,

Jason: It’s true because you know, you know, we don’t, it’s hard to, to think that way when you’re listening to these, these entrepreneurs are like, yeah, dude, I did like 20 million less last month. And I’m like, we’re like, ah, man, we’re like, we’re working for these clients who like, we have to be there as if we’re an employee and these guys are on a beach with their laptop. Which obviously is bullshit, but sure. Um, you’re right, man. You’re right. I mean, Kevin, Kevin, and I don’t stop and say shit, man. Like in, Kevin’s been doing the agency much longer than me. I’ve only been in the agency with him for four years or five years. Um, and he he’s really the one, but

Ezra: you’re right, man.

Kevin: It’s took taken a lot of turns, but you know, it’s been around for like 17 years. It’s, you know, it’s finally kind of spiking a little bit, which is cool, but you know, it’s, it’s so nice to have kind of a little bit of that. To go along with it.

Jason: Yeah. And that’s what I love.

Ezra: I was looking at when I was running, my, my agency was, you know, you can buy an e-commerce business for a hundred grand. You just buy one that only makes a hundred grand in revenue a year, or for 40 grand, 30 grand. You need to buy a small one that has supply chain figured out. So they got a product they sell and is doing some level of marketing and has some customers. And then you just grow that. And so as I’m looking ahead at like, okay, phase two of my business is going to be buying brands, not. Um, I’m looking in the deal. I’m going to start with a couple small ones like, Hey, I’m not going to buy a brand that costs me over a hundred grand. I’m just going to buy a small one that exists that has a product, a website, and some customers, and is not making much money. Maybe it’s Amazon only. Maybe it’s not whatever someone just wants to get out. And I’m going to take that. I’m start there. I’m a scale that so like you can get in at any level, you know what I mean? Like you make enough profit in your agency in order to buy. Not that I recommend taking the business that you have that is working and just going deep rather than wide, because the compulsion as entrepreneurs is to do a bunch of things. And it’s like, well, if you’re doing a bunch of things you don’t ever do one thing. Well, you know, um, I even saw that in Zipify. I used to have an app called coupon count bound. Um, had I had to stop it. I had to shut it down because it was a good app, but it. Taking away from Zipify pages in one click up sell, which are the, the, the offers that really are the two best offers that I had in the app agency. And I want to make every app and I want to have this idea and I have that idea have all these ideas, but it’s like, I’ve limited resource from a development standpoint, I can only build so much stuff. So it’s like, I should focus on the things that are actually working and see how far I can take those, rather than trying to do a whole bunch of shit. Yeah. We needed

Jason: to hear that calf because we try to do a Facebook course already.

Kevin: Shit, first thing we went,

Ezra: first thing you and

Kevin: maybe replicate

Jason: this thing for sure. Right. And what’s interesting. Um, as we’ll close here and we’ve been on, we’ve been on for awhile and I want to respect your time. Um, I got a tee time, um, but you know, I sent out an email for this Facebook course and I got an email back from someone and she’s like, I think you’re making too much money with your Facebook ads for me to buy your course. Huh? I thought you wanted to see all that money, you know,

Ezra: so that’s funny. Hey, listen. It was good to be on, you know, thank you for having me appreciate if you do it again sometime, maybe I’ll come down to the studio at some point, you know,

Jason: the thing is over, man. We’d love to have you. We have a lot of fun. We have a pool table. We have darts. We have. Giant 70 inch TV. We hang out, we watch movie, you know, I mean, we can never get back there.

Kevin: It’d be really nice. Yeah.

Jason: So definitely man, we’d love, we’d love to chat with you again. I mean, I, I mean, this is great.

Kevin: Well, I told you I don’t write anything down for these podcasts. I did have a few things that I wanted to discuss that we didn’t touch any of them. I can save this page for the next time. It was a great conversation. Thank you so much as, but it’s been awesome.

Ezra: Hey, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

Kevin: So that was a really fun interview. I really, really enjoyed that.

Jason: You know, I really, it’s funny because you see all these people on an, on, um, social media, you kind of think, you know them, but as it turned out to be probably one of the coolest dudes that we’ve, we’ve gotten to talk to, um, thus far, he’s really a down to earth guy. He knows his shit

Kevin: and guys. I mean, we literally could have talked for hours. He, you know, we’ve had interviews the last, these last couple months, and it almost seems like we’re rushing through like some of these e-commerce owners or the entrepreneurs. And I’m like, I’m trying to rush him. It was like, let’s just talk, like I love talking shop, which we love to too. So it was really cool. And I, uh, I’m looking forward to doing it again. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anyway, guys, thank you so much for listening. This has been episode 1 65 and as always, you can check us out at e-commerce uncensored.com and we’ll talk to you guys real soon. .

Jason: later.

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The post EU240: Replay: Ezra Firestone – Work/Life Balance and Success appeared first on eCommerce Uncensored.