0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Goal Digger. Today, we'll be talking about From High School Teacher to CEO & Entrepreneur to drop these value bombs. I brought Kirk Cooper and the EOFire studios. Kirk is the CEO and founder of Ecom Automation Gurus, and is also the author of “Scratch and Claw: The Path To Entrepreneurial Greatness.”. And today Fire Nation, we'll be chatting about automated e-commerce, multiple streams of income, why they are important. And we'll talk about how to handle remote teams properly and so much more.

0 (44s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors. The amount of fake ingredients we consume every single day should be a concern. And that people at Uprising Food are here to help. Right now, Uprising is offering Fire Nation $10 off the starter bundle. That includes two superfood cubes and a four-pack of freedom chips. Just visit UprisingFood.com/EOF to order yours today. The, my first million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to my first million, wherever you get your podcasts. Kirk, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

0 (1m 32s):
What's

1 (1m 33s):
Yeah, I'd say in regards to creating success and a lot of people kind of disagree with, I came from the school of thought that I couldn't part away from the nine to five, the security blanket. And I think a lot of people, you know, tell you that you need to almost break a hundred percent clean and get into what it is you're trying to do and accomplish so that you can give your, you know, your full attention to what it is you're trying to do. But for me, I held onto that security blanket as a high school teacher and coach, and started working kind of the Moonlight hours and, you know, 10:00 PM til 2:00 AM, till I really created something that I felt comfortable that I could branch off and make it a full-time opportunity.

0 (2m 14s):
And that's kind of the thing that we will be chatting about here today. Fire Nation, going from high school teacher to CEO and entrepreneur ends it's, let's just start off by trying to motivate our listeners. Kirk, how can Fire Nation finally get motivated to start their own business and finally leave that dreaded nine to five?

1 (2m 37s):
Absolutely. I think the motivation of, of just understanding what time freedom means, and we think that the average person works. I mean, we'll say from right out, out of college or high school, so twenties til on average 65, some even older than that years old. And then at that point, you know, you're trying to cram in everything that you want to do for the rest of your, when there's ample opportunities out there, there is 1,000,450 7 trillion ways to make money out there. And if you can find a way that makes it work for you, where you can get your time, freedom back. And then of course you have the financial freedom to still do the things you want to do, be able to travel the world, enjoy your family, you know, not punch a clock and pad somebody else's pocket necessarily.

1 (3m 25s):
You're doing things for yourself. That's all the motivation in my opinion, that you need, you know, in order to go out and be hungry, scratch claw, and go after your dreams because it's your only life. It's your only opportunity. And don't let your thirties, forties, fifties, wherever you're at in the game, you know, pass you by, without putting your best foot forward and trying to achieve those dreams

0 (3m 49s):
Now of scratch and clause sounds familiar, Fire Nation that's because in the intro I talked about Kirk's book scratch and claw the path to entrepreneurial greatness. So you might be hearing that reference a few times as we chat, but I do want to talk Kirk about automated e-commerce how can investing in an automated e-commerce store make a person passive income let's get detailed.

1 (4m 14s):
Yeah. And honestly, the whole system behind it is designed to help people get into there. If it's their second stream, fifth stream, 20th stream of income, whatever it is, the whole goal here is to help people buy their time back. So I've come from this approach after busting my butt to create systems and opportunities where I was just trying to make extra money. And I, I always equated more money to more work, harder work. So I was teaching from 7:00 AM til, you know, getting done with coaching at 7:00 PM. And then I would pull, you know, you know, get in real tight to the desk and work from nine, 10:00 PM til 2:00 AM. And it was just, I just knew the more I worked, okay. The more money I could make.

1 (4m 55s):
And then it got to the point where I felt like I just chained myself to my desk. I gave myself another form of employment, slavery, and I was motivated to go out and build a team where this store could be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I'm no longer running it, but I've trained and employed and brought in the minds. And in many cases, people smarter than myself to take it over where now they're making an income, I'm getting more revenue, more net coming from my store because it's being operated at all times. And that's where the light bulb went off. I figured I'd like to continue to grow this team, start building out different master classes and courses and helping grow a team that then we could bring in clients, investors, husbands, fathers, teachers, coaching, whoever who's looking to to find a way to make additional money so that they don't have to work that second job, you know, the additional time away from home.

1 (5m 49s):
And that's really where e-comm automation gurus was born is, is trying to help people find the financial freedom, which in turn is allowing us to earn the time freedom that I think we're all. Laughter no,

0 (6m 2s):
You learned your lesson on diversification. So let's talk about your perspective on why, why is it important to have a multiple streams of income?

1 (6m 11s):
I'd like to think of it as like a table, you know, a table with four legs, somebody can come up and kick the leg out on one corner of the table, but with the three other legs, you know, and in essence, the table should still be standing. So if we have different streams of income that are coming through our life, whether they're via investments or they're from actual manual work labor, we have those additional streams coming in. If something were to ever come in and to the point where we couldn't work anymore, we would still have additional opportunities, systems, passive income, whatever it is that's still bringing in, in lumping in incomes that we can continue to live our lives without, without hiccup.

1 (6m 53s):
So, you know, I find it, I find it extremely important to, for people to get ahead. And right now I think it's a really great example. If we look at all the inflation that's going on in the world to think that the dollar value is, I mean, it's dropping in what I would call rapidly and that's, that's extremely unfortunate. But if we can find ways that we have more and more forms of capital coming into us and we're able to pull it and put it into other opportunities, many of which you could find that help you reduce taxes and tax liability, as you can have different forms of tax, write off depreciation, all that kind of good stuff while still making a passive income, you can also help mitigate with your taxes too.

1 (7m 36s):
So there's a lot of cool strategies are out there. And I think it's vital in today's day and age. If you don't have multiple streams of income, you're potentially setting yourself up to work until you die. That's no way to.

0 (7m 46s):
And what are you working for? Exactly. Because as Kirk shared rapid inflation, I would actually say it's precipitous. I mean, it is just out of control and it's very scary. And if you don't act soon, then you know, you're busting your butt for what, for Fiat's for, for cash that is just sitting there eroding in your bank account. You need to find ways to put that money, to work, to invest in yourself, to invest in things that can at least help you keep up with inflation, if not get in front of it. And we have so much more value coming up. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors, your customers experiences everything when it comes to building and scaling your business and with multiple customers on board, your marketing team likely has conflicting priorities to juggle.

0 (8m 32s):
Unfortunately, this means that customer oriented tasks can often fall through the cracks. But what if you had a system that allowed you to bring your customer's experiences to the forefront so that your marketing team isn't stuck in the weeds of operations and can instead focus on building targeted, meaningful campaigns, start giving your customers what they deserve. Campaigns built in a scalable way with responsive designs and a little extra TLC with a HubSpot CRM platform, a HubSpot CRM platform helps you tackle the most challenging part of creating content scalability with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders. You can create robust, automated campaigns across email, social media, web, and customer chats and using new design tools. You can seamlessly adapt your content for multiple device types.

0 (9m 12s):
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0 (9m 55s):
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1 (10m 36s):
Circling back on the time. Freedom portion is, you know, there's an expiry date right to all of our lives. So I think it's important to be able to, to live the life on your terms and knowing that it's completely possible it's nobody's, you know, exempt or nobody's, you know, written off from the ability to be able to achieve that. That's the thing, anybody, anybody, anybody that wants it bad enough and wants to put in a little bit of work. And in many cases it's just finding an opportunity. You may not even have to know how to operate it in some cases, but it's, it's, it's, non-negotiable negotiable in the sense that, you know, we have loved ones around us and we have things that we want to do, be able to achieve. And, and by having these additional opportunities, again, one of them could go out, right?

1 (11m 21s):
One of them can, you know, run out or, you know, end up being a bust. But if you have 3, 4, 5, 6 others, even if they're small trickles, they all add up. So, you know, that's kind of the, the whole theory behind our e-commerce opportunities e-commerce is exploding and even more so since, you know, going through this COVID pandemic and whatnot, it really brought in even the, the older crowd that wasn't super savvy on purchasing online because it forced them into having to become savvy and purchase online. And the numbers that we kind of left off at on just an everyday, every month type scale are on average, you know, three to know in some cases, 8% higher, just because we picked up those people that are our lifers now for, for purchasing online.

1 (12m 6s):
So multiple streams of income, it's a must. You just got to find different ways to get in the game.

0 (12m 10s):
Now, if we want to have this time freedom that we're talking about, we need teams. So let's talk remote teams specifically. This can be tough if not handled properly. So break down how we can grow, manage and lead a remote team

1 (12m 28s):
From my approach, I had to know the system I had to be in the middle of it. I had to be in, you know, in the trenches for as long as I was before I even contemplated. Cause it wasn't even on my radar. You know, I'm coming from literally again, manually putting in the work, showing up on time, leaving at this time, getting paid for the, you know, the hours in between. So I, I knew no different. I just understood that you had to work for what it is you are going to be rewarded with. And that was an hourly salary, you know, if you will. So when I got to the point that I started putting together my e-commerce store stores and individual store and starting to achieve that individual success, I quickly realized I was working more and working harder and putting more on my plate than, than I cared to have.

1 (13m 16s):
But as addicting, also having that additional stream of income coming in, you know, it was money that came in and I put it away. I came in, I put it away and it's like, I really love this. I'd love to continue this, but I can't continue to, to work at this rate and run myself down. So it ended up just being more of a motivator that, Hey, you know what? I can bring people in, pay them. You know, they're, they're willing to work. They're hungry to work. They want to have an opportunity. The store can be run. Now while I'm teaching, while I'm coaching, it can be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we piece it together and we have enough people to have, you know, their off shifts their, their days off and continue to run it.

1 (13m 56s):
So I had six guys essentially that I trained for three months, three nights a week, went through every aspect. I mean, I was on basically on team viewer, you know, sharing on zoom and working my, working my business that day and day. And it was teaching it, I was coaching it. It was elaborating. They'd have questions, I'd answer the questions. And after three months I backed off and I still logged in three nights a week and watched them run and manage the store. And when they had questions and comments and when I was there to answer them. So essentially it was just a smooth transition and a handoff into them taking over what it was. I grew from ground zero. And then when the success started to happen at that point and I felt comfortable, then it was just, Hey, if you have questions, comments, call me, email me, text me whatever you're comfortable with.

1 (14m 45s):
You know, I want this to continue to run smooth. And it took off. At that point, we had six guys and then we brought on a few, you know, 10 clients kind of as a beta run. I wanted to see if we could help people and then spent a year with those 10 and then started drawing what I would consider to be pretty rapidly. And now we've got over 500 agents that work for us, seven different buildings, we've got cafeterias and all the buildings so that when they're hungry, they can push away from their seat, go grab a snack, come back up, continue to work and be efficient. It's, it's incredible. If you've got an opportunity out there and you feel that you can grow it, you can scale it and you can 10 exit five, exit, 20 exit, whatever you think you can.

1 (15m 26s):
And you can place people in there that are hungry to work for you and excited to work for you and are passionate about helping others skies

0 (15m 33s):
By our nation. Obviously there's upfront work that has to go into this. I mean, you've got to put in the work to train properly to make sure that they're running the systems and they have the tools and you're creating the automations that you want to. But then once you have that team in place, that's going to give you back. Some of that time they were talking about, so you have more time. Freedom. Now, Kirk, we've shared a lot. You've dropped a lot of value bombs thus far. What is one thing that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today?

1 (16m 5s):
I consider myself to be even still to this day, just a, an average run of the mill type guy. There's I mean, really nothing outside of being somebody that bust their butt. And again, scratching CLI just use that terminology. You absolutely scratch and claw your way through, you know, life, business relationships, you know, you don't give up. There's always a, you know, a brighter opportunity on the other side of it. So if you can establish that, scratch your claw, scratch and quad mentality, anything's possible, you know, you don't necessarily need to go out and make $20 million a year. You know, if you're like me coming from the point that I was making, you know, towards the end of my teaching, 60 to $70,000 a year, if you have the opportunity to go out and make a hundred hundred 50, 203, I mean, that is life changing.

1 (16m 55s):
If you can put in the work and execute, you know, you're gonna have your ups, you're gonna have your downs. You're gonna have your trials and tribulations. It's it's going to happen. But if you don't give up and you push forward and you really want to achieve the dreams that you have to to create time, freedom, you know, AK financial freedom, it's out there, you know, don't give up on yourself, don't give up on your family. It's, it's a hundred percent achievable

0 (17m 19s):
Before we let you go talk to us very briefly about scratching claw. Why Fire Nation needs to read this path to entrepreneurial?

1 (17m 26s):
Yes. I come from the position of my position really in it. I think it's written into the point that it's an easy read. It allows people to, even if they weren't teachers necessarily, right. You know, like I came from, it still gives the understanding of how, you know, how I made that transition and different aspects and different characteristics of a successful. And that's what the chapters are in the book. Actually, each, each chapter is a characteristic that I felt is highly valuable and important to, you know, to an entrepreneur. And then within those chapters, I pulled in different stories, examples, and just different ways to be creative, to help people really piece together and understand that this is possible.

1 (18m 13s):
You know, I'm a normal guy, people were talking to, or probably normal guys and gals. And if this is something on the radar, head over to Amazon, pick up the book, you know, one, I would be super appreciative. It's, it's been really cool, you know, life changing experience, a big bucket list type item, but I really do feel that it provides value to those people that are trying to be very, you know, break into the scene. And yeah, I'd love to hear from anybody that picks it up, reads it, and you know, has, has an enjoyment reading it,

0 (18m 42s):
Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with KC and JLD today. So keep up the heat, head over to EOFire.com and just type Kirk. That's K I R K in the search bar in his shows page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. And of course, check out scratch and claw and Kirk on and say, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (19m 13s):
I appreciate buddy. Thank you.

0 (19m 15s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bound content was brought to you by Kirk and Fire Nation. Are you ready? Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? If so, check out our free podcasting course, where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for you, guessed it for free visit freepodcastcourse.com. freepodcastcourse.com and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. The amount of fake ingredients we consume every single day should be a concern and that people at Uprising Food are here to help. Right now, uprising is offering Fire Nation $10 off the starter bundle. That includes two superfood cubes and a four-pack of freedom chips.

0 (19m 57s):
Just visit UprisingFood.com/EOF to order yours today. The, my first million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to my first million, wherever you get your podcasts.