E-commerce Marketing Tips with Jason Weisenthal

CEO of WallMonkeys – Jason Weisenthal

How was Jason able to grow Wallmonkey without any market research and why it pays doing the opposite than everyone else. The one thing you can do if you are a good starter and a bad finisher. The super simple, yet extremely important thing you need to get good at if you want to successfully hire your freelancers. Plus, all the latest insiders tips in ecommerce marketing and why Jason spends more money advertising on Amazon than anywhere else!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• WallMonkeys.com

Check out JasonWeisenthal.comfor more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Welcome to Eventual Millionaire.  I'm Jaime Tardy and today on the show we have Jason Weisenthal.  Now, he runs wallmonkeys.com.  I met him at a conference because he's friends with a thousand of my other friends and it took us this long, almost a year, to get him on the show.  Thank you so much for coming on the show today.  I really appreciate it.

Jason:	Thanks for having me Jaime.

Jaime:	What's so amazing is I just moved into a new house and I was looking for a wall art for the children and Wallmonkeys was absolutely everywhere.  So either I had typed it in [inaudible] [00:05:43] and you were retarding the heck out of me or you're just apparently everywhere.  Do you have a very specific marketing plan for following people around online?

Jason:	Following around no, but we definitely have a couple really big target markets and mommies is definitely at the heart of our business.  

Jaime:	You got me.  And it totally worked.  So tell us a little about how you got into doing this company.

Jason:	Totally by accident.  I grew up in New Jersey, I ran a retail shoe store for quite a long time.  And [inaudible] like a typical entrepreneur I just got bored with things being okay, on cruise control and started [inaudible] around and decided to start this business.  I saw Fathead was out there selling professional athletes and I thought every mom out there would wanna order their kid as a custom decal.  And I just started [inaudible].

Jaime:	So you had no online ecommerce business whatsoever and you just sort of decided to go on that route.  What year was that?

Jason:	2007, 2008.

Jaime:	Okay, what makes you do that?

Jason:	You know, I just think you can learn anything you want.  I didn't have any graphic design, any printing, any ecommerce and I just - you know, you hire a few smart people to help you, someone to help you learn how to use the printers, you do your research.  It doesn't seem like it's a big deal to me, it was just something I wanted to do so I learned what I had to do to do it.

Jaime:	What were the startup costs on that, too?  Because most of the time people are trying to start online businesses where they don't have a lot of startup costs in general.  Was there a lot with that because you have to deal with printing?

Jason:	Well, the printer was about $25,000.00 and I had to build a website and some other things.  But I actually - it barely fit, but I got the printer to fit in my basement.  I ran it, it was in my basement, by myself.  I did everything.  So my startup costs were probably between $40,000.00 and $50,000.00.

Jaime:	Okay, and did you have that?  So what did that look like, deciding to go, "I'm gonna start this new thing online for $40,000.00 or $50,000.00 and we'll go like this and hope that it works out well."

Jason:	Yes, I don't know.  I must not think like the average person.  If I lost $100.00 of your money I would feel terrible, but to risk a lot of my money or some of my money, I'm totally fine with that.  I didn't - I thought it was a good idea, no one was doing it, there really was no market research to do and I just did it.  I really didn't think much about it.

Jaime:	People hate hearing that.  "I really didn't think much about it.  I just spent $50,000.00 and then made a huge successful business out of it."

Jason:	No, actually, I'm sorry.  I thought a lot about it, I didn't worry a lot about it.

Jaime:	Ooh, that's a huge distinction, though, in general.  So that's ridiculously impressive that you didn't do a lot of market analysis because - or maybe you can clarify.  Because online sometimes there's no market because it's a bad idea and other times there's no market because you're the first ones getting in.  So how do you determine that'

Jason:	Yeah, so we were definitely - I was definitely if not the first, right at the very, very beginning of this.  The actual, original idea with the moms uploading pictures of their kids really didn't work because there wasn't even an iPhone ' the resolution [inaudible] [00:09:14] weren't there.  So even people that wanted it didn't have good enough images or they didn't know how to upload the image.  I mean, the original business plan really did not succeed.  I just kept trying different things.  I was too stubborn to fail.

Jaime:	Okay, let's dive into that a little bit because everybody wants to hear your first initial thing not working.  So when you dive into that, "Hey, I spent $40,000.00 or $50,000.00 and my initial idea didn't work," and you didn't go, "Oh, I gotta go back to the shoe store," right?  You kept going and pivoting.  So how did that transition happen?

Jason:	Yeah, so I just always think, "I'm a hacker.  I'm too stubborn to fail.  I'm this type A, hyped up, nonstop idea person."  So we kind of kept trying to sell the custom decals and it didn't work and then I would try fundraising or to target professional photographers.  I kept trying different things.  And we'd sell a little bit here and there, but it wasn't until we [inaudible] [00:10:12] content to provide images for people to choose from.  That was when we kind of had our tipping point moment.  

Jaime:	Okay, how did you come up with that idea, No. 1, and how did you know that it actually worked?

Jason:	So what happened was, I lived in Jersey and it was in my basement and then we made a really big move.  We moved to Maryland and I went from my basement in New Jersey to my basement in Maryland and I had - my only interaction with people was pretty much going to Starbucks at like 3:00 in the afternoon.  So I just decided to put up some little clip art for kids, like silhouettes, like yoga silhouettes, or little baseball player silhouettes, or pictures of cartoon animals.  

	Then we put some on Amazon and when we put them on Amazon they started to sell more.  And then as I bought more collections, I'd buy, say, 100 or 200 and I was doing all this work myself, all the editing and uploading and everything.  And then it just hit me one day, I'm like, "Okay, how do we do this much, much bigger?"  So [inaudible] large stock photo company to agree to work with me as this little tiny company with no money and just an idea, let our customers view their millions of images rather than a few hundred.  And once we had access to millions of images, there was no understanding that it happened.  It was like we went from my basement to an office in just a few months.  We went from nothing to, you know, maybe eight employees in just a few months.

Jaime:	Okay, so how in the heck - walk us step by step, don't miss anything, how you got some huge company to A.) give you the time of day, and B.) actually work with you.  So what did you do?

Jason:	I went to look - we needed a company that had an API with images.  Basically we could go to their site, grab all their images, and let them be seen on our site.  So there was one company that was at the forefront of this.  I contacted them and this guy, Chad, who is still - I just saw him the other day in D.C., is just a wonderful human being.  He believed my vision and sold it to his bosses and got it signed off and we did all this programming.  I had to hire more programmers and spend more money and it really was like flipping the switch and seeing if anybody responded.  And almost as soon as we turned on the API feed and offered millions of images, our sales just completely took off.

Jaime:	How do you know that in - I mean, was it just another, "Hey, we're gonna test this, hey, we're gonna test this, hey, we're gonna test this," and one thing hit?  Or did you think for sure that this was gonna work?

Jason:	I was pretty sure.  It took a while for the programming.  There's always delays in programming, so I was a bit frustrated with that, but what I noticed was people wanted wall decals they just didn't have the image.  You can be a great doctor or own a great restaurant but you don't have medical images or you don't have pictures of veal parmigiana or a pizza or just anything.  So once we let all of these people see exactly what they wanted in high resolution and they could buy it, it was pretty - I was pretty sure once we had a bigger selection it would just scale up.

Jaime:	That's insane.  Okay, how can we have somebody apply this to their business?  Because what you get when people hear a story is, "Well, he was the first guy that was able to do it therefore there was nobody else, therefore it was easier and it just exploded."  We hate the just exploded stories because it's hard to duplicate that.  So what do you think somebody can take away from that story to be able to duplicate in their own business?

Jason:	So being really stubborn and continuing to fail.  This is way far from an overnight success.  This is several years and many times that I walked out of the room or had to tell somebody that I sold one item yesterday or zero items and I have a printer sitting idle.  It's not this idea - I mean, you can think about things about leveraging or bigger, millions of images instead of a few images, but just - I don't have an MBA, I don't have all these things.  You just grind it out and be too stubborn to fail.  Just keep thinking, thinking, thinking.

Jaime:	I love this.  Okay, do you think that's innate in you?  Or do you think that's something you can cultivate?

Jason:	I think it's both.  You know, I've been really lucky to attend some Mastermind events and get to spend time with the people - like you, like other podcasters, like great bloggers.  You know, a lot of smart business people.  And you can choose to absorb lessons from them.  You're not gonna be them, you have to be yourself, but I do think it's innate, but I do think there's a lot of curiosity and a constant desire to learn that you have to have and a confidence to know that I refuse to fail.

Jaime:	That's awesome.  Okay, so you said you were the idea guy.  So it sounds like that sort of comes naturally to you where you're like, "Ooh, let's try this, let's try this."  How do you quell that, though?  So A.) it's one of your strengths, but it seems like it could also be a weakness in that we're typical entrepreneurs and we're like, "Squirrel!"  Right?  New idea! And you get pulled in 17 different directions.  So how do you mitigate doing both?  Because it's a strength and a weakness I would think.

Jason:	It is.  I actually say it's a gift and a curse.  Cameron Herold calls it the bipolar roller coaster, like you're on top of the world and the next day your world's falling apart.  I've had many of those where even - just something goes so terribly wrong with technology.  But partly I thrive on chaos, so you have to have a certain amount of things going on.  But it is something that I've actually been working on a lot is picking the most important things.  What fires are you gonna tend to?  Or what project is gonna be the most profitable for you?  How can you look at the landscape and see where do I spend my energy?  And then identify your weaknesses.  

	One of the things I learned, just in the past year, year and a half really, is I'm a really good starter and I'm a really bad finisher.  So now I hire people that are finishers.  And I have people in my office that once I get somebody pointed in the right direction and really communicate my idea, they can finish it and it makes things go a lot smoother and it takes away my weakest points.

Jaime:	How did you figure out that you were a starter not a finisher?

Jason:	Well, I started a lot of things that I didn't finish.  And then actually what really helped was I gave all of my employees personality tests.  And when I would see what characteristics the employees had that I meshed best with, the ones that - she would be my personal assistant, this guy just always understood me.  I saw these attention to detail, these characteristics that I don't have, these finishing skills.  So it became - once you see it, you see it, it only took 42 years to figure it out.

Jaime:	You're like, "Oh, click.  It finally clicked into place."  

Jason:	Pretty much.

Jaime:	But I love that you were - without knowing that you were able to run a ridiculously amazing business, too.  So we don't have to have it all figured out.  Now don't get me wrong, that seems like something that figuring out sooner rather than later very important because there'll be the landscape of all these started projects randomly all over the place.  Tell me about that, though, too.  Because how many employees do you have now and how big is Wallmonkeys?

Jason:	We have a lot of automation now for order processing and how - it's something that I take a lot of pride in.  It's something that a lot of effort goes into.  And we use some outsourcers for IT and different things like pay per click, but all together there's probably just about a dozen people that get paid every week one way or another from us.

Jaime:	Why outsource like pay per click and stuff like that and not do it in house?

Jason:	Certain things like customer service, I think that needs to be in house especially what we do, you know, it's very customer service oriented and you want people to feel the love and be able to answer those questions exactly.  But like pay per click, I found someone who is an expert at that and he's doing a better job and giving it more attention than I ever could so that was the right choice for that situation.

Jaime:	How do you find those people and hire - like even when you were saying your personal assistant - because finding those fits can be a long, hard process, especially because you can know what doesn't work, but it's hard to know what does work.  So can you walk me through that?

Jason:	Yeah, there's been a lot of missed hires.  You know, again, the older you get you learn more of these skills.  The outsourcers and things like that, a lot of programmers and pay per click, we just use - I use Upwork or Elance.  It used to be Elance, now it's Upwork or Freelancer.  If it's maybe a smaller project I'll go to Freelancer.  But what I've got better at is describing the product in great detail.  Describe your needs in great detail.  Be very specific about what you need and know how to screen your candidates because it's expensive to hire the wrong person.

Jaime:	Ridiculously.  So how do you screen your candidates?  What do you do?

Jason:	Well, I've just gotten much better at taking the time when I make that listing to say exactly what I'm looking for.  And also talk about the other things that are important to me.  I require constant communication and updates and feedback and I need someone who, if I call you, you need to get back to me even if you don't have the answer.  If I don't hear from you for 24 hours I'm gonna assume you died.  So?

Jaime:	Good to know in advance.  Yeah, that's awesome.

Jason:	'it's the right skills but it's also the right communication.  So I like people that are more problem solvers and hackers.  I'm not impressed by the big education as much as knowing these problem solving skills to just find a way and not give an excuse or not say it can't be done.

Jaime:	Like one of my favorite quotes, "We either find a way or make one."  Right?  

Jason:	Exactly.

Jaime:	So having that result is really, really important to you.  Okay, awesome.  Can you tell me a little bit about - I know you sell on Amazon, like marketing in ecommerce right now.  What is working right now in ecommerce marketing?

Jason:	So the landscape is changing.  We were, even on Amazon, we were strictly print on demand.  So we were selling - basically that meant you didn't see the little Prime button next to our stuff.  And now over the past few months we've been adding more and more items that are best sellers and popular items.  Amazon Prime, that's not a big secret, is really, really huge, as well as advertising through Amazon's platform.  When we look at the money we're spending, we're spending more money on Amazon.  That number is rising versus Google or spending it on social media advertising.  Amazon is the Google of shopping so it's a pretty efficient place to spend your money to promote your own products.  You're just giving them the more money, but it performs.

Jaime:	Okay, so I have a thousand questions on this because two people - I have a client that's going through this right now and then I have a friend, a millionaire, that I interviewed talking about this exact same thing.  Because we were sort of going back and forth and going, "Okay, Amazon takes a bigger margin, but has a bigger audience which is great."  I only order Amazon Prime.  No offense, I'm just like, "Amazon Prime it."  That's how I do all of my shopping in general.  So when we were talking it was like, oh, is it worth it to make sure you have your - it'd be Amazon Prime.  So you're saying it is definitely, definitely worth it even if it costs more to have them hold it, right?

Jason:	It doesn't always cost more for them to hold it, it's just our business model was print on demand.  If we have 20 million images and they're all available in seven sizes, that's 140 million options.  You're not gonna stock that.  So I always just print it on demand.  Now we look at some of our bestsellers and send them.  And again, it only took 42 years to say, "Oh, wow, look.  We do sell more."  But we still sell plenty through our website and through Amazon that's not Prime.  You know, not everyone just shops Prime because we do sell kind of a niche product.  So a lot of times, if you want a picture of something really odd, I might be the only place to get it.

Jaime:	And they'll wait for it.  It won't be that big of a deal.  Okay, but you went through and figured out the ones that were your top ones, make sure we stock that as much as we can and you sell a lot more of it because of that.

Jason:	Yeah, it just makes it - it's easier to ship a few hundred of something in, say, 100 per box to Amazon and just get them all out the door than if you get, say, 30 orders a day for an item and you're shipping 30 individual tubes with labels on them.  It's - the cost of fulfillment really is not a big thing.  It was just the decision to print an advance of orders when our whole business model had been to print on demand.

Jaime:	So when Amazon does this shipping, do you just have to pay them a flat fee, like whatever the cost is for them to ship it?  Or do you not because it's free and they do it themselves and they eat the cost?
Jason:	No, Amazon - I mean, there's multiple relationships and this could be a whole Amazon talk.  But in general for [inaudible] [00:24:00] you send them your inventory and they charge you a fee based on the - a price to send out your product based on the weight and then they also charge you a commission based on the selling price.  So it's a combination of the size, the weight, and how much it sells for.

Jaime:	Okay, and I do - the reason why we're going down this road, I have a client that does - that teaches this stuff but I can't have him on the show yet, he's very close, but yet.  So being able to sort of go down this rabbit hole a little bit because a lot of people don't talk about Amazon selling in general at all.  And it's such a huge marketplace it's insane.  So can you also tell me about the ad spend on Amazon, what that looks like, how you get good at it.  Is it similar to Google ads or Facebook ads or anything like that, too?

Jason:	It's evolving.  Amazon's platform is evolving.  They're making it much better.  Right now it's not as advanced.  They're adding new features all the time, like you couldn't put in negative key words, you couldn't - there's a really big lag on reporting so if you would start a campaign, you don't see the results in real time.  You just have to kind of trust the system and tweak it.  It's not as evolved as far as the ability to edit it and create your custom campaigns the way you can on other platforms.  But if you figure out what you're doing and create the right ad groups, and once you get your method down and you pay someone or you do it yourself and learn how to do it, it's pretty cost effective.

Jaime:	I love hearing that.  Now is it easy to figure out on your own if you like doing marketing in general you'd be like, oh, go ahead and figure it out on your own?  Like Facebook ads is kind of annoying.  There's a thousand variables with everything and they're getting super hardcore on restrictions, so doing it yourself isn't what it used to be I guess I should say.

Jason:	Yeah, it's not that difficult.  Just like anything, the more attention you pay to it and there's also so many groups, it's such a hot topic.  I mean, I know you know ASM, the Amazing Selling Machine, there's so many groups and everyone wants to get on the Amazon bus right now.  There's so many people that are trying to private label.  It's a free for all.  So I wouldn't say that I'm an expert on Amazon marketing, but we're definitely using it and I might not have the most firm grasp on it but I can tell you that it's [inaudible] revenue for them because they're - it's growing by leaps and bounds.

Jaime:	See, that's the reason I wanted to go down this rabbit hole because it is a trend right now.  It is insane how many people, not only people that already have businesses and they're just sort of transitioning it to Amazon because they've been selling on their own, but also brand new people sort of getting into this space.  And it seems like there's a lot of competition right now on Amazon in general.  There's a thousand different places that you can get something similar.  So being able to have - like I've even had somebody go, "Well, this is the thing that I create and I have somebody buying my stuff and beating me in Amazon."  That sucks.  So trying to go and play that game seems like a hard one.  How do you guys deal with that?

Jason:	I'm in a bit of a niche and that's - there's still tons of competition and we've seen some of these other recent problems, but I think a lot of this popularity you're seeing, the people that are selling the courses are making more money than 97 percent or 99 percent of the people who have these dreams of becoming an Amazon millionaire from selling the one product that they tweaked and sourced from Alibaba.  That there's already [inaudible] [00:27:48] pancake flippers out there.  

Jaime:	All right.  Nobody buy pancake flipping things, okay?  You heard it here first.  Oh, my gosh.  Well, I mean, I think that's the thing that's really, really important though is finding that need like you did and then going after that and being the first to market I think's really important.  So when we start looking at the future, because I'm really impressed with way back when you going, "I'm gonna get into this because I see it as an opportunity."  Do you see anything else with technology coming up in the future?  Because it's easy to say when you look back, but it's so hard to say when you look forward.  So I'd love your opinion in general on where you think the trends are going or what do you think might be coming up brand new in technology soon.

Jason:	I don't know if it's 100 percent answering your question, but the ability to have a shopping cart like Shopify or Magenta or something like one of those and create multi-channel selling easily.  So to take your inventory, put it into one place and then send it to Amazon, and send it to eBay, and send it to Etsy, and send it to say, nine other Amazon, you know, Amazon Canada, Amazon Mexico, different places in Europe.  It's becoming easier and easier to create those data feeds and send this information out.  That is a current - something that's happening right now.  Companies that are really competing to make that easier or faster to get a piece of that business.  
	
	And something that we've done - because we have a couple million SKUs on Amazon, which is something that not that many people have.  Some people do, but not that many.  But we've been approached by a couple other companies that wanna sell - that have a large number of SKUs and we're actually - right now we're onboarding our very first customer.  We built our own software that sends all the data to Amazon and sends back the inventory reports and sales reports, commission reports and lets us change prices and descriptions.  So we built the system for our own needs over time and now some other companies that are not direct competitors of us, they might sell canvas art or metal prints or something else, we're gonna start to help them sell on Amazon.

Jaime:	See, I love that.  And you hear this so often with companies and people I interview because they're going, "I solved the need that I already had, proprietary softwarewise and then I sell the crap out of that later and make even more money in that business than I did in the business before."  But that's also diversification.  So does that mean - I mean, that's a whole separate new business that you could get into.  How are you getting into that?

Jason:	So it was something that - I knew that what we created for ourselves would benefit other people, but I was too busy - too preoccupied running my own business until recently one of the companies we do business with for images came to me and said, "We have this really big customer and they are having a hard time selling on Amazon.  Would you talk to them and maybe make a deal with them?  I don't want anything, just if you can get them online, they'll pay us more in commissions."  So what I'm doing is we're just starting with one company.  I'm onboarding one company, gonna see what lessons I learned from what makes their needs different from our needs and then see if it turns into a full-fledged business.

Jaime:	That's insane.  How many hours a week do you work right now?

Jason:	I think I just - there's no such thing as balance.  I don't know.  I guess I work all the time.  Like I went to the gym first thing this morning and that's really important to me and, you know, I'm thinking about it in the gym.  I guess that answer would probably be I never stop working. 
Jaime:	You're like, "My brain won't shut off even when I try."

Jason:	It really, really takes an effort to think about something else.  

Jaime:	Okay, and I see this as a common factor for many of the people that I interview or work with or whatever, which again, blessing and curse that we can't turn it off.  How do you manage that in general?  Or do you not?  Do you just let it run free and go, "This is who I am and everything is fine?"  How do we work on that?

Jason:	No, that's probably the thing I wanted to talk about most, but we didn't talk about an agenda today, is the daily routine and harnessing that.  There's a lot of people out there that I listen to and read Hal Elrod's morning ritual and there's all these different people and I just grab pieces from them.  So what I've tried to do is come up with the things that are non-negotiable in my day, like going to the gym, making sure I have the right food so I don't - I feed my body the right thing.  Getting eight hours of sleep has almost become a sport.  And then it's just managing your energy.  I don't believe that people run out of time, they run out of willpower.  

	So I'm really big into routines.  It's not so much that it's a morning routine, it's my routine.  I know when I work best and what I need to get done every day.  So as long as I can get some of these other things done, if I can eat the right foods that I cooked and I can go to the gym and I can get enough sleep, then - if those non-negotiables are done, then - I mean, I love what I do anyway, but I have no resentment or no bad feelings or bad energy about throwing myself into my work because these other things have been addressed that are important to me.

Jaime:	How do you figure that - it's funny because I'm actually interviewing Hal's business partner later today, [inaudible] [00:33:18], which is funny that you bring him up.  I love Hal.  But he has a very specific system, right'  And I've tried his system.  I can't do it exactly the way he wants it so I pick pieces, but how did you get to know for you specifically when in the day you have more energy, what works for you, what doesn't work?  I know it's testing, but tell me more about that than just "I tested it."

Jason:	Yeah, so the more things that you can do that I found - like I can't be Hal Elrod and I can't be Gary Vaynerchuk and I can't be all these other people that I admire and they've got these great personalities or they have something like - I can only be me.  So that's - part of it was just to say you need to do what's best for Jason.  How can you be the best version of you?  

	So for me that's eating breakfast and drinking my coffee and then I prep my food for the day while I'm eating my breakfast, or during that breakfast time.  I don't want to wake up at 4:30 in the morning like Hal Elrod because I want eight hours of sleep.  I wanna sleep until 6:30 or 7:00 and that works for me.  And working out in the afternoon works for me.  So you may say I wanna get it done at 7:00 in the morning, but my body's barely moving.  I'm crippled.  I can cook my food, but I can't go to the gym.  So it's just a matter of seeing realistically what does my body need, what can I do, and where do I build that in?  

	I mean, I'm lucky that I run an ecommerce business.  I'm lucky enough to work any 24 hours of the day that I want.  So if I go to the gym at 2:00 in the afternoon because it makes me happy the gym is empty and I feel special because I'm there when it's slow, if that works for me then let's embrace that.

Jaime:	I think that's awesome.  How do you stick with it though, too?  Because it's easy to go, "Shoot, I have this thing.  I'm not gonna do it at 2:00 right now because this thing came up."  And especially as a business owner you're like, "Oh, that's really important."  How do we end up sticking with it for long term?

Jason:	If it's important to you - some things took longer.  I had to find the right routine.  I did all this research, I talked to people and I do have someone that helps me with my routine.  He doesn't go to the gym with me, but it's just that important to me.  There's no way I'm not gonna lift four days a week.  It is absolutely unacceptable that I don't do that four days a week.  I'm gonna treat my body the right way because it's that important.

Jaime:	Why is it that important?

Jason:	Partly just for the discipline, but I feel better.  I work better if I eat the right foods, if I have food in my office so I don't have to leave and go out and I'm putting the right types of food - I cooked my own food.  I know what works for my body and I don't put myself in the situation where I'm hungry and angry.  And - yeah, exactly.  It's what works for me.  

	It took me, Jaime, I can't tell you - I would write down in my to-do list or in my journal to learn how to meditate.  I must have written that down for two years and about nine months ago I finally went and learned TM meditation.  And now that's part of my routine and I meditate every single day.  But I mean, it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go meditate."  I procrastinated on that for - I'm telling you that had to be in my [inaudible] [00:36:34] for two years before I went and did it.

Jaime:	I love hearing that so that way everybody who's writing that thing down or that one thing that they're avoiding as much as possible and feel crappy because they haven't gotten the chance to do it, it can happen.  How did it happen, though'  So you write it down, you feel crappy probably every single time you write it down because you're like, "It's been a year and I still haven't done this, but it's still on my list."  Right?  How do you mitigate that?

Jason:	I don't know.  I mean, some of these things, there were fitness things that were on my list for a long time and then I got into my routine and I achieved a lot of those goals.  And still, I just print wall decals so I'm not gonna be a competitive body builder, I just wanna feel really good and I have certain goals.  The meditation I think maybe I just had the right opening in my schedule and I finally googled it and looked and saw, "Oh, wow, it's only 20 minutes from my house and they have a four day course starting Thursday night.  Now you have no excuse.  Just pay and go."  And I finally just made the time in my schedule and did it.  And that's another one of those things that's part of my non-negotiables every day that's just made my life a little bit better.

Jaime:	So why is meditation important to you now that you actually got it in your schedule?  Because we wanna hear - because there's a lot of people that know that they need to do it and have been writing it on their list for a year and haven't done it.  So kick them in the butt right now.

Jason:	Well, the meditation, I'd say - I am the furthest thing, I am type A, I'm a Jersey boy, I'm wound up, I go a thousand miles an hour, I am not a woo-woo, chill, meditation guy.  It totally resets my [inaudible] 20 minutes of meditation and I can be totally fired up and my brain's going at 100 million ways and 20 minutes, [inaudible] I never nap.  I used to take naps.  Sometimes I would get so burned out I would take a nap and then it would take a half an hour to wake up, I need a cup of coffee.  I meditate for 20 minutes and five minutes later I'm better than I was.  It's almost like setting me back to where I was when I woke up in the morning calm.  So it's like a second start to my day.
Jaime:	Everybody's like, "Okay, I want that.  That's really worth me going on a meditation retreat and figuring that stuff out."  That's awesome.  I know we have to start wrapping up.  So what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Jason:	Of a million.  You know, I think personal improvement is a really big thing is to work on yourself while you work on your business.  So you know, the way I looked at my to-do list after two years and finally finding a way to meditate.  Look at that one thing on your list that you've been putting off for the longest and just get it done.

Jaime:	I love that it's personalwise.  Because I've heard people say businesswise do that one big thing.  And then it's like, that's awesome and yeah, sometimes we forget, especially as business - especially as type A business owners, we forget that personal actually matters so much.  Your energy and where you're at, as you've said this entire time, matter for an amazing business anyway.  That's awesome.  

	Okay, so everybody, make sure you actually do what he just said.  Don't just listen in and then don't do anything.  Even if you're driving in the car you can do a little message on your phone to remind you to do it later, just so you know.  So tell us where we can find more about Wallmonkeys, Jason, and you online in general.

Jason:	So just wallmonkeys.com.  I am on Facebook.  We have a Facebook page.  You could google my name if you wanted to and see lots of pictures and some places I've been, but wallmonkeys.com or you could send me an email at jason@wallmonkeys.com and I'd be happy to reply to anyone.

Jaime:	Oh, you're awesome.  Though, just so you know, I've had people say that before and they get a little bombarded, but be nice to him.  Tell him how much he's awesome and then he'll love getting those emails.  Thank you so much for coming on the show today Jason.  I really appreciate it.

Jason:	Thanks for having me.

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Tags: advertising, Amazon, E-Commerce, E-Commerce Marketing, Human Resources, Jason Weisenthal, millionaire interview, Online Marketing, Outsourcing

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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