Aidan 

Welcome to episode number 107 of The Growth Booth. I'm incredibly excited about the show that we've got prepared for you today because I'm going to be joined by a guy that I met online for the first time six or seven years ago. I knew from the outset that this was a guy that was not going to accept failure and was going to make things happen. And he's gone on to do just that. I'm talking about my friend, Scott Ferrigan. 

You may know him, he's been on the show in the past. He was on with episode number 80, where we were decoding success. I've gotten to know Scott a bit over the past few years, this has been part of our Blueprint Academy program, but where I really got to know him was when he invested in our program about six or seven years ago, which was a really a precursor, a predecessor to what we're focused on in 2024, which is Amazon wholesale. 

So Scott, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to be here on the show again, here today.

Scott 

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Aidan 

Now, we're going to be diving into the model, but just to kick us off to whet people's appetite a little bit, I know you've sold some pretty bizarre products over the years through your Amazon wholesale business. Are there any that jumped out to you that you could share with our listeners here? Just some weird and wonderful products that you've sold?

Scott 

Weird and wonderful products? Let's see.

Aidan 

I remember a walking stick. Go ahead.

Scott 

Yes, we did. We did a walking stick. That was definitely interesting, because you jumped down into products and things look good. That was kind of a lesson for us where you need to deep dive into a product before you actually jump into it because it was actually a stick that was supposed to be a measuring stick.

Aidan 

Like to measure how far you've walked or something?

Scott 

Yes, like if you wanted to walk something, you wanted to walk off and had a little wheel with it and everything. The metrics and everything looked really well and then you jump into it. And then we can't figure out this particular product was one where you want to really deep dive when you're looking to sell something, not only the metrics, but look at reviews, look at everything, and everything looked like it was going to work, and then it was humorous or where you kind of have to just laugh at yourself type of thing, where some of the reviews are like, "Oh, this measuring stick doesn't measure anything more than to be a walking stick. That'd be the best thing that it could be used for.” My brother and I are business partners. I remember laughing over some of the reviews and we're like, "Wow, I guess we really need to check on things here before we just jump into everything." You know, sometimes everything looks great on the surface and you get through it, and then you just live and learn the next time and choose different products.

Aidan 

I think the real key there is making sure that you follow a series of checks before you sell anything. I mean, you want to make sure that you're vetting a product in multiple ways before you jump in and start selling the product. I mean, the good news is that it's actually not difficult to do that. And I bet you that's a mistake that you would never ever make again. I think it was one of the very first products that you did.

Scott 

That was a rookie mistake that we made probably in the first three or four months, just as you're doing things, you're excited, the business is growing and it's more and more sales, and so you're trying to find more and more products, and “This looks good. Bam, bam, alright, let's get 30 of those,” and before you know it, you're trying to sell 30 walking sticks.

Aidan 

Yeah, so I should actually give our listeners here a little bit more context. The business model that you using to sell online is essentially our eFormula business model. It's where you buy products at wholesale prices, and you sell them at retail prices and able to pocket the difference. You've been able to build phenomenal business from this. It hasn't happened overnight, it hasn't been like magic, you've had to put in some real work, but you've been able to reap the rewards as well.

Scott 

This is our 6th year, obviously, starting from the program that we had purchased from you, building things up going through doing a proof of concept, which is kind of the first three, four months where you're going through. And then once you decide this is what you want to do, my brother and I decided we wanted to be business partners, we each had our own business, and had separate businesses other than this that weren't ecommerce. We decided that we were both going to cash out of those so we could focus 100% of our effort into this. That's what we did. I think officially just both of us were in it completely, probably August of 2019, so a little over five years ago. I had purchased the original package in January of 2019, I think that was. Did that sound right? I think January of 2018, yeah, August of 2018.

Aidan 

It sounds about right. Yeah, you know, it was a few years ago. So I'm feeling the exact dates, I do know that you able to hit the ground running pretty quickly there. I remember having conversations with you and sort of watching your progress, which again, is not something that may happen to everyone, but you are an action taker and you took it seriously and you've got serious result. 

Before all of that though, I know that you've always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the ventures you'd done offline prior to coming into our online business.

Scott 

Sure. Yes, I do. The whole thing is kind of an evolution of what you're looking for, as I knew, shortly after graduating from college, that I wanted to be in business for myself. I did work in the private sector for about 10 years before. Sometimes you have to build up the courage to be able to jump and do that. I jumped into a printer cartridge refill franchise. I think that first business that you can get, that you can build up and start to see success really builds a bunch of confidence for you that you can come in with the attitude that Brian and I came in with the program we purchased from you and where it was. It's just going to succeed once you've done it once. So that kind of built up. 

I ended up with two retail stores, about 11 employees, but I was working 70 or 80 hours a week. It was great to be in business for yourself, but really wanted more time. I did spun that business off and then jumped into the ATM business. I worked with another franchise or had ATMs that were mainly in high-end hotels and things like that. On the surface, it seemed like it was going to be a fairly hands-off, more of a lifestyle business, but taking care of the machines was fine during the week, but if there was any problems, typically the hotels would have special events on the weekends. I noticed I was tethered to the business, if you will. Yeah.

Aidan 

Also, the weekend is traditionally the time that we want to have off for ourselves, and then you're trying to build a lifestyle business and a hotel is having an event, and I guess you've got to be going back in there and refilling the ATM machines and all that.

Scott 

Exactly. If they didn't clarify that they were going to have an event and you've got the machine stocked with the amount of cash that it would need for a week, for 90% of the week, all but maybe two or three weeks and that happens to be a week they don't tell you, it was tough. I take a lot of pride in what I do, so it would really bother me. I could check everything on my phone if I could check it. If I knew a machine was down, then it would stress me out. If I was trying to do something with my family, then I would still be preoccupied. Now I’m looking for something else that I could do that was online, and I started looking at dropshipping. I was having a hard time figuring out the Facebook ads, and along the ideas of, if you have a problem with something, typically there's somebody out there that knows how to solve it. You don't need to figure everything out yourself every single time. 

That's the advantage of a lot of the programs that are out there. I stumbled upon, I believe it might have been like a white label program that you had. The negative part of that was that the program was closed, but for me, that was a positive also, because if you and Steve were so confident in everything that you had going that you opened up the programs for only a set amount of time, and then they were done, and you focused on the people that were willing to make the actions, then I was really drawn to that. At that time, there was pre marketing, it was only I'm going to say maybe a month before you opened up enrollment into the program that I ultimately purchased. That had to do with Amazon, and you had given a little bit of information about wholesale, and that sounded good so we jumped into that.

Aidan 

Was there a moment in your journey, fast forwarding a little bit when you and your brother sort of realized, “Wow, this works. This is a turning point,” or maybe it was like a financial number that you hit or getting your first sale? Was there any moment?

Scott 

Yeah, it was. We were probably, like I told you August of 2018 was when we started. I'm going to say it was somewhere along the April-May timeframe, we joined BPA by that point and had gotten some really good advice from you and from the other folks at BPA that had helped take the business to the next level. It was right around then that we were getting close to six figures a month. That seemed like that was like a big goal for us to hit that. The scales kind of tipped, and I'm not saying that six figures even is necessarily where the scales tipped, but as you were building and things started to get easier and things were very consistent, then it was kind of the aha moment. I mean, you just keep growing from there.

Aidan 

I think a lot of people listening to this also would be pretty happy to get to four figures a month, or even five figures. I can remember in another conversation we had, you mentioned that you and Brian were sitting around, I think you're having a barbecue or something, and you had your first $1,000 day. That's obviously a long time before getting to six figures, which is in a month, which is phenomenal.

Scott 

That was our second month. 

Aidan 

That's the second month. I should also make it crystal clear for people listening to this that you shouldn't jump in to any program and expect to make $1,000 a day in your first couple of months. It's not typical. Brian's an action taker, and when he jumps into something, he jumps into it and he follows everything to a T. I just wanted to get that little disclaimer out there. 

You weren't having that barbecue and you would hit that $1,000 a day. What did that feel like? Because that's surreal, or was that what you expected?

Scott 

We were literally jumping, high fives, cheering the beers, everything. It was a great feeling, one of many that we've had over the years where that was a really big milestone. The $1,000 day was a big milestone. The first $10,000 month is a big milestone. And you just keep going and going with it. You shuffle things around. Brian's wife was able to retire young and she's in her 40s. That was a milestone too.

Aidan 

That's awesome. Yes, for me that's what it's all about, really, it's about lifestyle freedom. In my business, I feel incredibly grateful to be able to, you know, pick my kids up from school every day, walk them to school every day. They're younger than your kids. They're seven and five, but that to me is what lifestyle freedom is all about. So anyway, I hope you had some really good steaks on that barbecue and were able to celebrate along the way. I think it's really important that you do celebrate those milestones along the way as well, because otherwise you're in perpetual growth mode, and then one day you wake up and like, "Oh, wow, I've got this incredible business."

So what does your typical day look like for you now? I mean, I know you mentioned that you used to work 60, 70, 80 hours a weekend, past businesses that you've started. What's it like nowadays?

Scott 

Yes, we get up in the morning, I work right from home. So it's wake up, I normally don't sleep in, so I'm normally out by 6:30. Brian and I are normally started by 7AM and we're done some time between 11 and 12 most days, and that's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. We don't work on Thursdays, that’s like an errand day for us, volunteer on grocery shopping, whatever errands we need to do. And so having the lifestyle business to be able to be flexible enough to go ahead and do all of those things, I mean, whether it's running errands, or like you said, spending time with the kids, I live in Michigan right now, I decided I wanted to see what life was in on the other side of the country. I decided at one point I was going to up and move to Texas, moved down to Texas. And that was simple. With the lifestyle business, it's unplug your computer, move to Texas. We had to sell a house and things like that and buy another house, but you plug it back in when you get there and you're back in business, because you're not having to touch the products at all.

Aidan 

Your business has grown enormously. How do you run it? Have you got a VA that helps you out? Is it just you and your brother? What's that sort of look like nowadays?

Scott 

It is just my brother and I. We've got a new venture kind of coming on to expand into some private label business where we might hire some marketing people, but we are laser-focused in a niche. At one point, we were really wide with the breadth of products we had. I think we had 75, almost 80 different products. The niche we're in right now is really defined. At one point, we were selling anything from maybe $35 sale price to say $100, $150. I think our average sale price right now is closer to $200 with the niche that we're in, but it's, like I said, it's laser-focused. My brother has 20 years in the experience in the industry and had a lot of inroads into it. He's got a lot of knowledge, which helps for us to stay focused in that. I mean, if other things come available, then we obviously will check things out. 

I was at a barbecue a year ago when I was talking with a friend's brother who lives in Florida, and they were looking to take their company to Amazon. We looked at their products to try and figure out if it was a good fit for us to sell their products on Amazon. That particular one didn't work out the way that we had wanted it to, but you know, we always have to be open. You never know when something like that will hit and maybe it'll be a goldmine too.

Aidan 

Yeah, it sounds like you do a lot of your business over barbecues, which I love, because I'm a big barbecue fan. That's great. 

The other thing that I think is great is how you're able to keep such a lean team. I mean, as you and your brother doing the majority of the let's call it like the heavy lifting. But you've systematized things, you've got a lifestyle business, and you've been able to grow that business incredibly. Most online business models that I'm familiar with, to grow to the level that you're at, you would need to have a whole team of people working for you. And that's even with an online business. An offline business would be 10X worse than that, but you've done an amazing job just keeping it lean.

Scott 

Yeah. The advantage of the wholesale business is when you're Amazon FBA, they take care of a lot. I mean, they take care of all the customer service, the returns, customer questions, anything, they take care of all of that. So our job is to find products that fit with the metrics that are going to make money, and to get them in, get them to the warehouse and the warehouse, get them prepped, get them in, and then we're just managing pricing to make sure that we're competitive on everything. We probably could outsource some of that. I like to keep my finger on the pulse. So that's me personally, I like to, I'm the numbers guy, Brian is really a lot of the product knowledge guy, and I'm the spreadsheet guy and the QuickBooks guy and all that kind of stuff.

Aidan 

How has your mindset as an entrepreneur developed over the past, I don't know, four or five, six years? I assume that as you've dived into online business and really succeeded at it, that you must have made some shifts or developed your thinking now. Are there any tips that you would leave people with regarding mindset?

Scott 

Well, you're always continuing to look to grow. I mean, we don't just stay stagnant. As you're looking to grow, I'm not afraid of risk. We'll jump into something, and if it works, then that's great. Let's just keep pumping it and let's try and find other things that are synergistic with it. If it doesn't work, and I think this is something that a lot of people don't talk about, is when you jump into something, and it doesn't work, that's actually where you learn a lot of your lessons. A lot of people don't like to talk about their failures, but when you jump into something, and for the cliche, you could end up with a baseball bat to the face and you're picking splinters out of your teeth, you're like, “Hey, I'm not going to do that again.” That actually helps you with other things, and then you can build everything in. 

I mean, we've tried a lot of things, and we've been successful. We've been successful, obviously, at a handful of them, and there have been other things that we've jumped into, and like, “Wow, that didn't work. That kind of hurt,” but you learn from that. That's how you learn from other things. Take for instance, what I just said with that company that wanted us to do their supplies. Well, some of the stuff we had learned from trying to expand into private label, we were able to apply to some of this. Maybe that helps you walk away from a bad deal where it may, if you didn't have the experience, you might have jumped in and then had to learn it. 

Aidan 

A lot of what you're saying here to me sounds like you're really talking about getting comfortable with going outside your comfort zone and trying new things. This is something that I personally believe in a lot and sort of asking myself the question, “What's the worst that could happen here? What's my risk?” and really trying to find the symmetrical situation where the upside massively outweighs the downside because then you can try multiple things. If some of them don't work, okay, maybe you've wasted some time, hopefully you haven't wasted much money. But if one thing does work, then that can sort of dwarf or make up for the other losses. I think your mindset tip there is also about getting comfortable with learning new things and going outside your comfort zone and not doing things the way you've always done them because you're looking for new results.

Scott 

Yes. Brian and I were having a conversation about that earlier today, and the conversation came out and we're like, “Alright, well, what about this? We're gonna have to throw some money at it.” On the upside, if everything works, it's great. And if it's on the downside, well, we've thrown money at a bad idea before you just learn from it, and then go from that.

Aidan 

I think one of the things, going back to what we were talking about a few moments ago, one of the reasons you've been able to scale your business and do very well from it is also down to the fact that it's a simple business model. There are not a dozens of moving parts, you don't have to dive into this world of complicated Facebook ads, or you don't even have to do your own branding for your own products. You don't have to deal with manufacturers it's just it's just the age-old, tried and tested, buy one product at wholesale price, sell it at retail price, leverage the biggest marketplace on the web and the world, amazon.com, to your advantage. That way you're going with the current of things. Also, we've seen year on year on year more people are buying products online, so you're going with the current there.

Scott 

And not only that, you've got all of the ‘buy the wholesale, sell it at retail, take the profit’ but also going in with this particular model with the metrics that you have in front of you. You can say, “Hey, well, we haven't sold staplers before, but I can find this stapler and I can look at the metrics so I know going in, this stapler sells 500 staplers a month. There's five other people, so we could probably sell 30 staplers and get 30 of those 500 sales. We know where the price historically has been. We know where it is, we can go in there and say, ‘Yep, we can make our profit margin we want to make there,’ and then do that.” Or, you know, maybe you send in five and then you move it up to 10, then you move it up to 50. 

Now, are you ever going to get all 500? You probably are not because there's other people that are trying to sell. But if you understand that that is another huge advantage to this business, is you understanding the demand, being able to look at the players in the market and you know a lot of what's going on beforehand and which makes a lot of what you're doing less risky than a lot of other businesses where you're jumping in, maybe you're trying to sell something that's a me-too product, and so you're trying to pull product demand away from another product to yours, but this is a brand new product, everyone knows what the Swingline stapler is. They're typing it into the computer when they go to Amazon, so they're looking for it. And at the end of the day, they care that it's Amazon Prime, they don't care tha  it's you versus maybe Amazon selling it, and maybe another seller selling it, but that's a huge advantage with the business model.

Aidan 

It really is. So for people listening to this here today and thinking that they might want to get started in a business like this, is there any advice that you would give to people in that situation based on your own experiences and things that you've seen online? So again, specifically for people who are thinking about hitting the reset button or thinking about embarking on an online journey for the first time even.

Scott 

Yeah, I think that the advantage of buying into a system, say like this, because I did it six years ago, is that you're not having to reinvent the wheel yourself. You're able to come in, people understand what's going on, you've got people that can answer questions if you have questions, and are there to help you succeed. The biggest thing is that if you're looking to do that, and you, you want a little bit of assurance, now you do have to, in the back of your mind, understand that it's hard work and that you only succeed if you do the work. Anybody can lay the plans out for you, but if you aren't going to execute it… If you need help, having someone go through and say, “This is how you set up an Amazon account. This is how you go and find suppliers. This is how you evaluate to see if it's profitable. This is how you look at the metrics to make sure that everything works. Checkbox, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox,” and then you just buy the product, send it in, and everything goes.

Aidan 

Well, that's it really, isn't it? I mean, being able to leverage blueprints and recipes from people who have been there and done that. I think some of my biggest wins and my life have been when I've been able to leverage the knowledge of people who have been there and done that. 

So, Scott, you are an incredible inspiration to a lot of people. It's so great to be able to get you on here to hear a little bit more about your story. Thanks for taking some time out to be with us here today.

Scott 

Thanks, Aidan.

Aidan 

Alright guys, that's a wrap. This is episode number 107. As always, you can find the show notes, the information and everything else over at thegrowthbooth.com. If you want to find out more about eFormula, just head over to eformula.com. It's open right now, but it's not going to be open for long. So head over to eformula.com if you want to get some more information, and we'll be talking more about the eFormula in the next episode of The Growth Booth. We'll see you then. Bye for now.