15 Years in Business & Success - What's Next with Kimarie Santiago

0:28Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? going big, pivoting during tough times, the right e-commerce platform, how to create the anti-Zon experience, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kim Marie and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey.

1:09It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Kim Marie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, hello. Thank you so much for having me back. Excited to be here. Something that I believe most people disagree with when it comes to success is that success is a marathon. It is not a sprint. My husband has told me this in business and he's been in business longer than I have.

1:53And he's always right. You're never going to see success overnight. And if you think you're going to sprint to the success line, good luck, maybe play the lottery. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of falling down, getting back up and, you know, persevering through the toughest times. So I would fully believe it's a marathon and that marathon may last until the end of your days. Well, we're talking 15 years, Fire Nation. Five years, most businesses fail. Ten years, the vast majority of businesses are no longer running. Kim Marie has 15 years in business and success. So I want to talk about your belief that we should not go big until we are literally busting out of our seams.

2:37Because so many times we're hearing from people, you need to scale, you need to leverage, you need to just grow, grow, grow. You believe something different. Tell us more. Yeah, I actually disagree with scaling and growing when it comes to the size of your business until your business can actually afford to pay for scaling. So many times I see new business owners, entrepreneurs that are just starting out and their first question, you know, an advice asking me for advice or contacts is, well, how can I get into Walmart? How can I start putting my products on Walmart shelves? And I'm like, well, are you selling enough to the direct consumer before you can handle wholesale business?

3:20Because wholesale business will cost you a lot. You have to be able to make sure you can fund that, that you can afford to pay for all of that. You can afford to wait 90 days to get your check. You can afford for chargebacks from major chains. So I always see folks that have these huge aspirations to go big, go wholesale. They want to go right into all the chain stores with their new products. But you really got to think about that. Who's going to fund it? How is it going to how are you going to be able to sustain that if you don't have a healthy direct to consumer business first? Because that's what's really going to be able to fund the wholesale business.

3:59So I see a lot of folks trying to kind of, you know, do bigger business before they can actually afford to do bigger business. And that also comes down to what you're able to do internally on your own. Like if you don't need a 15 ,000 square foot warehouse space, then don't rent it. There's no reason for you to be in that space. Make sure you're only in the 2 ,000 square foot space and you have boxes piled as high as the ceiling. And business is so busy, you're cramming things in. You know, don't take on anything until your business can actually sustain it on its own. And oh, by the way, something that Kimri didn't even mention is that, oh yeah, you get into Walmart, you get into Target, you get into Whole Foods.

4:42And then guess what? Can you even keep up with the demand? Are you going to be able to keep inventory stocked? I am invested in a ton of companies. And that's just like, I see the same thing over and over again. And even though we try to advise them and let them know, you know, they make these big announcements. They're just like, we got into Target, we're going to crush it. And then the next quarter, they sent out an email. They're just like, well, we were in Target, but we couldn't keep up with inventory. So now we're out and they blacklisted us for 12 months because we couldn't keep up with the stock because our products sold like gangbusters.

5:14But we didn't have the back end in place. We couldn't keep up with inventory with sales. It ends up being a huge, huge setback. Now, Kim Marie, we all face tough times. Can you share how we can learn how to pivot when those times are tough? Yeah, absolutely. And I went through probably one of the hardest times during COVID. You know, I was busting at the seams as a small business prior to COVID. We finally made the leap and rented a much bigger warehouse space. We invested in automation equipment, you know, all different types of filling machines, labeling machines. We spent probably a quarter million dollars on just the equipment alone.

5:53Move into this huge space. We're ready to rock. And boom, COVID hits. And the state of New Jersey shut my company down because they didn't deem salt as a necessary food item or commodity that was required to be sold during COVID. So I guess if you were in the chicken market or the fish and eggs and milk market, you were good. But gourmet salt was shut down. And here we were with over, you know, a half a million dollars invested in a new space and new equipment and all of this just sitting waiting for nine months. And we were forced to keep paying our bills for nine months, paying our rent, paying our electric bills, all of that with no nothing happening, no sales happening, nothing moving.

6:41And it was terrifying. fine but the smart things that were done in advance as a business owner prepared me for the worst possibilities even if you believe it can't happen it's never going to happen to me no one could have ever thought that we would have a major pandemic such as COVID nobody yet I was really smart I made sure that I had an opt-out of my lease even though it was a 10-year lease I made sure that my attorney reviewed it and made sure that if there was any natural disasters, a fire, a tornado, a hurt, whatever, we could get out of that lease. Well, COVID pandemic fell into that. So we could quickly get out of our lease if we needed to, depending upon how things were going.

7:25We had a backup plan of where to go if we needed to get out of that space and it became non-economic anymore. We were really prepared, but it came with years of preparing to get there first. And then when you're there, you got to make sure you can prepare to quickly pivot and get out of that if you have to. And I know it sounds crazy, but you always have to say, well, if something really awful happens, the worst case scenario, what will we do? And I think that many companies fail because they're not prepared for that. In the army, we call that Audie Murphy's law. It's what can go wrong will go wrong.

8:00That is literally how we train. That's how we trained in preparation for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for any deployment that we would make. It's what could go wrong will go wrong. And Kim Marie employed a little bit of that. She's like, well, hey, there could be a natural disaster. Who knows what that could look like? What's the backup plan? Now let's talk about the choice of e-commerce platforms, because I think a lot of people get paralyzed. They're just like, oh my God, there's options, there's Amazon, there's this, there's that, there's Shopify. What do you think about the choice in the choosing of the right e-commerce platform?

8:36Yeah. So, you know, like you said, it's so competitive and there's so many different options. And if you don't have a website yet, you kind of are dizzy trying to figure out what's the best option for you. And truthfully, you know, you also get paralyzed by being on a platform that you might have selected a long time ago. I was in that position. I had selected, you know, 15 years ago, Shopify wasn't around really. And so we had options like Wix and Weebly and, you know, all of these kind of pretty basic lower tier e-commerce platforms where it was like do it yourself. And then you also had the option to hire somebody to do it for you.

9:15And then you were chained to them. And anytime you wanted to make a change to your website, you had to pay somebody to change it. So as the years have progressed, it's pretty amazing at the tools that are available. I migrated over to Shopify and it was like I left a planet that was literally suffocating me. I'm now on this amazing planet that's like nothing but fabulous everything. I'm like, why didn't I do this a long time ago? But, you know, my product catalog was 450 SKUs. and the idea of changing over and having to start over someplace else was really daunting. When am I going to find the time to do that?

9:55But now there is just so many options out there. There's migration companies that can do it for you on a couple hundred bucks. They'll migrate your entire product line. They'll migrate all of your contacts. They'll do it for you for a couple hundred dollars. You don't even have to think about it. And choosing a platform in commerce is critical. Look at the ones that offer the most bells and whistles. How is it going to support you? How many different types of things do they offer for free? I mean, switching over to Shopify for me, and I don't want to make this a Shopify advertisement. Well, you can actually, because they're a sponsor of the show.

10:31So it's perfect. Well, I absolutely love them. I love their apps that you can add on to your own site with pop-up features for collecting user email addresses, couponing, rewards programs. Those are all free apps to use and they're highly remarkable and just truly drive sales for you in every possible way. I love it. And again, Shopify is a sponsor so we can keep talking about them all day long. They've been a great supporter of the show for a long time. So firenationshopify.com slash fire, check it out for sure. And we have a lot more to talk about when we get back from the actual sponsors of today's show.

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12:15So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Fire Nation, let me drop a truth bomb. The biggest bottleneck holding most entrepreneurs back isn't lack of ideas, tools, or hustle. It's lack of connection. And when I scaled my business to eight figures and mentored thousands of entrepreneurs, I saw the same thing again and again. People trying to do it alone. And that's why I created the Freedom Circle. You've heard me end every episode of Entrepreneurs on Fire by saying you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

12:56That's not just a quote, it's the reality of success. The Freedom Circle instantly becomes your family of five and then some. It's a community of driven entrepreneurs ready to pour ideas, connections, and support into every part of your journey. So Fire Nation, if you're ready to level up and finally create freedom on your terms, head to freedom-circle.com to learn more. That's freedom-circle.com. Kim Marie, we're back. And listen, a lot of people, they hire out their SEO, their advertising. They're like, oh, there's agencies that do that. I'm too busy. I've got to hire this stuff out. But you actually believe we should do SEO on our own.

13:33Tell us more. Yes, this is really important because I've spent a lot of money on SEO. and you know much like I was saying previously about the earlier days where you figured oh well I have to hire somebody to build my website for me not anymore you know there's so when you are building your own website let's say in Shopify and you're adding your own products there are all these different little things that you don't even know exist but the SEO experts are aware of and if you just simply go on to YouTube and search for SEO on my own, do it myself, you know, DIY SEO, you'll find a ton of videos and you won't have these fees of upwards of$3 ,500 a month to be able to do things you can do on your own while you're actually implementing your products, you know, for your catalog.

14:25They're really simple things, simple changes, simple tags you can put in. And there's so many resources out there that you're like, well, why do I have to pay someone want to do this. If I'm adding a product to my catalog, I might as well go ahead and queue it up for, you know, search as well. And I just found that I wasted a ton of money and really got very little results. When I started doing SEO on my own and just sitting down and taking some time to research it, I was getting results almost immediately. And Fire Nation, I just want to say this. It might sound harsh, but it's true. Nobody cares about your business except you.

15:02You care about your business. Other people care about their business, about their life. An agency, an agency cares about the agency's business. So yes, they want, they want to hire you. They want you to hire them. They want to do enough so that you're kind of happy with their work, but they're looking to hire more clients, take on more work, and it's never going to be a focus for you. You need to take this on yourself. Now let's talk about cutting through the noise with big commerce. I I mean, AKA the gorilla in the room, Amazon. That's a big thorn in a lot of small business sides. You know, Amazon, let's face it, has become a giant and most people feel as though if they can't find it on Amazon, they probably don't want it.

15:45That said, for vendors here in the US, we're finding it extremely hard to cut through all of the noise. The noise being the astronomical fees that are involved. You have to pay to just, you know, have your products listed, not even with sales yet, just to list your products. And then you have to worry about the fees that Amazon collects, which, by the way, they run it like a stock market. So, for an example, if you're selling garden tools and it's springtime, the fees and commissions that Amazon takes are higher. If you're selling garden tools and it's right before, you know, fall and winter starts coming, the commissions that Amazon takes are lower.

16:26If Amazon has to talk to a customer that purchased your garden tools, you get charged for that. If you want Amazon to fulfill your goods, you get charged for that. If your goods are sitting in an Amazon warehouse waiting to be fulfilled by Amazon, you're getting charged daily for that. By the time you actually add up all the expenses and fees, oh, you basically owe Amazon a lot more money than you've ever made. To boot, now Amazon is making their own branded products. So that nice sweater that is hand knit and beautiful made of cashmere, Amazon knocked it off and they're selling it for half the price with an Amazon tag on it.

17:03It's becoming harder and harder and harder to see success through major platforms. And Amazon is only one of those marketplaces. Just one. If you don't pump tons of money into advertising, tons of money into sponsorship positions, your chances of actually selling on Amazon are extremely low, which is disappointing. Because your hopes are that you're going to get on Amazon and sales are going to be kicking. It really has become, in my opinion, over the years, very, very difficult to actually see sales. And actually get a return on all of these investments that you're making. To boot, a majority of the product that's being sold through Amazon is also being funneled in from overseas.

17:51So now you have, you know, low quality goods from overseas that are competing directly with your high quality goods. And obviously the customers are going to buy something that's cheaper, but might look the same, but probably won't be the same quality. It won't be the same experience. It won't be the same anything. But because it was cheaper, it was sold. Um, you know, it's just, it's very, very frustrating as business owners to constantly try to figure out all of these challenges with these huge platforms. So what, what do we do about it? What can we do about it? Well, a handful of us who are all frustrated decided to start our own business.

18:37We decided to start an e-commerce platform and it's launching this month in May. It is the absolute anti-Zon. It's called The Hive, and we're super excited about it. It's been bootstrapped fully by a handful of us. We've invested in a pretty amazing technology that incorporates the social media aspect along with high-quality shopping. part of what we've also committed to is it's fee free so the only time you are ever charged anything on the hive is actually if you sell something and we take a very small percentage and that's just to keep the platform working and keep it healthy for everyone to keep using we will not allow any sort of products from overseas unless there's a brand located here in the U.S., they have it manufactured, and there's a USA company behind a product of import.

19:38So we've really taken the worst things about the largest e-commerce platforms and said, all right, let's go out and design the best thing and the best new e-commerce platform that literally reverses all of the things we hate about these big platforms. So it's fee-free, You get direct contact with customers. So you'll never have someone from the Hive handle your customer service. It will always be the vendor handling their own customer. It's their customer. Why not? Right. Makes sense. So we really are launching a new, you know, platform that works for us for a change instead of the corporate suits.

20:22And Fire Nation, I can tell you, I experienced this firsthand. I mean, back in 2016, I launched the Freedom Journal. The next year was the Mastery Journal. The following year was the Podcast Journal. And these products were massive, massive, had massive profit centers. They had massive net profits. Like it was very, very impressive. I mean, I was about all in like five or$6 for these journals and I was selling them for$39. And for a while, that was doing pretty good on Amazon, even with that profit margin being, well, especially with that profit margin being huge. but then over time 17 18 20 22 20 it's just these fees just kept coming and everything just kept stacking up and all of a sudden i'm like man i'm like barely breaking even on this product that has a massive product margin uh profit margin because it was a product that i created myself it was like my own material so like i was able to give it that markup i'm like how does anybody make any money on amazon with all these fees these storage fees this fees that they just kept hitting me finally we just let, we just let them sell out and we just did not do another order.

21:25Cause I'm like, it's just not worth it. So it's crazy. You have to look for anti-Zon experiences and Kimmery, bring us home. What's the one thing you really want Fire Nation to get from our conversation today? And then we'll say goodbye. Yeah. You know, I feel as though if you've made it as far as you've made it, like for myself, 15 years, that's already a great sign that you're doing a lot of things right. You can't be doing anything wrong if you're in business for 15 years. Maybe it's stumbled a bit, but it's 15 years now. So it's okay to say, well, what's next? What can we do to continue supporting what we're doing best?

22:05And if it doesn't exist out there, then maybe create it. As of now, our new platform for e-commerce, the Hive, we have over 1 ,500 vendors ready to launch. That tells you something. There's a lot of companies out there, a lot of people that are selling high quality goods here in the US that want to be recognized, that want to have an opportunity to sell again and not have to fight through all this noise. So I feel like as a business owner, when you've hit that point and you've said, wow, this is going really great, but what can we do next? You never know what your options are. Shoot for the stars.

22:44hopefully hit the moon. And what's the call to action for our listeners? Where can they find you? Actually, our new e-commerce platform, if it's okay to give a shout out, it's HiveShop.org. And you'll see us all over social media soon. We're going to be doing a huge push of advertising to try to get folks on board and download our new app. It'll be available both for Apple as well as anyone with a Google, whatever the Google one is, sorry, Google Play. So we're really excited about it. And it's fun to know that vendors just like myself, small business owners just like myself, bonded together, put our own money into building this technology.

23:29And for us, it's already successful. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with KS and JLD today. So keep up the heat. and for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Kim Marie in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Kim Marie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Kim Marie for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment, I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.

24:20The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there. We're on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward.

25:08Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more.