Done For You E-Commerce with Dawson Gant: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down done-for-you e-commerce. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Dawson Gant and to EO Fire Studios. Dawson is a 22-year-old serial entrepreneur with a managed services company that oversees more than 250 online retail stores, a luxury car dealership, and an eight-figure real estate company in Fire Nation. Today, we'll talk about how it's better to work smarter than harder, and building any company your team is the most important thing and time is very valuable and oh, so much more.

0:41And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dawson and our sponsors. Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level.

1:21Email me at john at EO fire.com with a subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15 minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you. Dawson say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with Perfect. Thanks so much for having me on again. Uh, what's up fire nation? Um, so yeah, I think that what a big misconception about being successful is that you have to work really, really hard. Uh, you can't enjoy life. You have to put a ton of hours in. and I would disagree with that. I think the most important thing is to work smart and when you're building and scaling to make sure that you hire the right people around you because if you work really, really hard and I use this analogy a lot, if you're swinging a hammer, only you can swing that hammer but if you have a really good team around you and they can all swing a different hammer, then you're going to build a lot bigger empire.

2:20So I think it's much more important to work smart rather than working very, very hard. Well, being 22 years old, You definitely have the time to swing the hammer quite a few times with quite a few hands to build that empire that you aforementioned. And today, Fire Nation, as I mentioned, we're going to be talking a little bit about done-for-you e-commerce. So what first, Dawson, sparked your interest in entrepreneurship? Yeah, so I started a real estate company in 2017, and that was my first taste of entrepreneurship. I was actually a real estate agent. And then I started fixing and flipping and doing wholesale contracts.

2:58And I've grown that company to a multi-seven-figure-a-year company. So that was like my first taste of entrepreneurship and what working smart can get you and where it can get you, right? And then as I was in the world up until about two, two and a half years ago, I started realizing kind of the only flaw with real estate is it's very market dependent, meaning that if you know, I'm based out of Scottsdale right now. So Scottsdale's market's very, very different than Mississippi's market. And you can't have a large global audience because again, you're building a supply for local markets, right?

3:37People only live where they want to live and it's in a very small market. So I got into e-commerce with my two partners, Brandon and Tyler, about two and a half years ago. They had been in the business for roughly 10 years together. So they're a little older than me. And I saw an opportunity that would allow me to make money and provide a product or service to people in any country because people buy all of Amazon and Walmart from anywhere from Bangladesh to Canada to right here in Scottsdale, Arizona. So that's kind of how I got started and why we kind of made the transition. Obviously, I still have my real estate company, but I'm heavily focused on the e-commerce side of things now.

4:16Well, you have quite a bit of experience of both owning and scaling a business. So kind of talk us through that because here at Entrepreneurs on Fire, we really like to get in the trenches and understand the journey, the ups, the downs, the successes, the failures. So what was that like for you? I've been very, very fortunate to have really, really good people with me, but obviously that didn't happen overnight. And I think that if I was going to tell anybody anything about scaling, personnel is so important. Who you have on your team and who's going to actually get in the trenches for you every day and help build these companies is so important.

4:53I had at one time an office full of almost 30 people for my real estate company. And now we're pretty much 100 % virtual. I have only 10 American employees now. but I was able to leverage some really, really good connections and build out virtual assistant personnel and also keep the Americans that had the best interests of the company. So I think that building any company, your personnel is the most important thing because if you don't have people that share that vision with you and that are aligned and want to see you succeed and want to see the company succeed and want to succeed themselves, it's really, really hard to build a huge empire and build multiple companies that can do not only large numbers as far as financial, but also have a large impact on the world.

5:37So DFY, done for you commerce, that's a managed service company. And you actually operate over 250 online stores at last counts. So let's talk about what exactly your company DFY commerce does. And you know, really help us out by talking to us maybe even defining what a managed service even is. So what we saw when we started our e-commerce business is that we had a lot of people that wanted to get involved in some way. Maybe it was people that had their own product and they wanted to get it on Walmart or Amazon, or they just wanted to be a part of e-commerce because they saw what a large market, you know, it's a multi-trillion dollar market, what a large market it could be.

6:19So after we had started running some stores for our friends and families, we decided to start offering it to clients. So what we do basically at Done For You Commerce, it's really just in the name. We do almost everything for our clients from product procurement to actually fulfilling the products out of our warehouse in Scottsdale to making sure the products are profitable, pictures of products, all that good stuff. And then, you know, when you have buyers on Amazon or Walmart that may say, hey, I was unhappy with the product. Well, one of our employees handles that. So we do manage everything.

6:52And, you know, it's also a trend lately. We've been in the business for quite a few years and we see that, you know, e-commerce is super trendy the last 12 months and a lot of people want to provide automation. But we don't really agree with the word automation because it's not an automated passive business. It's not, you know, a stock portfolio that's paying you dividends. It's a real business that, you know, you can either run on your own or you can choose to leverage a company like ours to manage it. Right. So we have employees that are working hours for you. You know, every hour you have up to seven employees working on your store.

7:24So that's why we went the route of a managed service company, because at the end of the day, that's what we are doing. You know, you you pay us a consultant fee and we're running the store for you. But it's still your business and it's still, you know, you have some say in the products and the final decisions, obviously. So Fire Nation, there's a lot to kind of take in here. And I kind of do like the fact that, you know, it's not all about just automation. There has to be some personal flavor up in this as well, if you're really going to make this work in a meaningful way. And we have a lot to get to on the specifics when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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9:11See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. schedule your free personal 13 point assessment with clay clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire because clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference you will interact with clay directly see thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the thrive time show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star tim tebow and president trump's son eric trump today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire become the next success story.

9:59Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. So Fire Nation, we're back and Dawson, I want to talk about specifics, like specifically if Fire Nation is listening and they're like, wow, 250 online stores that are being managed. You know, obviously there's that luxury car dealership, eight-figure real estate company. I mean, you have a lot that's going on. So, you figured some stuff out. Let's talk about how our listeners, how Fire Nation, or just how a person in general could get involved with a company like this.

10:38Best way to reach out to us, obviously, I have Instagram. It's DawsonGantt. But we do have a website, dfycommerce.com. And if you're interested in potentially becoming a client, you've decided that you want to take advantage of the trillion dollar market that is e-commerce and start selling some products online and you know increase your market availability and go global that's something we're happy to talk about we have a ton of really really talented account managers that would just talk about the specifics with you and get you guys started you know we're wrapping up q4 and you know most of our clients we actually just did a census we're a little bit over 300 clients now they're making pretty sizable money you know it's uh it's definitely not change your life money where you're going to get to retire, but it does help.

11:21What a lot of our clients will call it is, you know, comfortability money, right? It pays a car note every month. It pays a mortgage. Maybe it affords them a nice vacation every couple months. So, you know, making$5 ,000 to$10 ,000 online is really, really nice because, you know, they can work their day job. And when they hire a company like ours to manage it, they're able to still focus on their passions, or maybe it's a, you know, a W-2 job that they're still focused on or a tertiary business that they want to scale up and they just want to make sure they have a little bit of income on the side in order to, you know, provide more comfortability, right?

11:58Like provide a little bit of ease. You know, they're not worrying about paying their rent. They're not worried about paying their car notes because they have a little bit of money coming in. Comfortability, money. I like that phrase in Fire Nation. I'm sure that an extra five, 10, maybe even if you're really rocking at$15 ,000 per month, you know, would be a big help for most individuals in this world for very obvious reasons. And you did talk about some of the benefits, Dawson, but let's get into a couple more. Like what really are the big benefits of getting involved with a company like this?

12:28Our ideal client and someone that's going to really take the benefits and run with it is someone that, you know, like I said, already has maybe a really good paying W-2 job or, you know, has businesses that takes their time, their sweat equity, and that they can come and pay us a consultant fee in order to kind of put their equity in in dollars rather than sweat equity. And they're looking for something that's going to scale up in the next six months to a year and make that five to$10 ,000. That's the ideal client, right? We want clients that are using this as a second vehicle to build wealth and build income.

13:02And that's the client that's really going to be able to take advantage of this because again, like you and myself, time is the most viable thing to us. We can pay for someone else's time to manage something like this, but still reap the benefits of being an online seller. That's the most beautiful thing. There's some other underlying benefits as well. Like I've got over a couple million American Express points, right? So that's really cool. Once you start selling on these products and you're getting credit card benefits and things like that, you get to travel for free. You get to get cash back rewards, things like that.

13:34It's not really calculated into the monthly income that this store would make you. It's also just kind of a perk. So we have a lot of clients that have their main gig and they want to continue that, but they're just looking for some diversification. Maybe they're in crypto, they have some real estate rentals, but they're looking for something that's going to be a really, really good cash on cash return to add to their portfolio. So before we let you go here today, let's kind of get into some important lessons that you've learned over your journey? Like really give us some takeaways that, you know, of course you would know now if you had to start out completely from scratch that you would make sure that you implemented in your life.

14:13My top three or four takeaways is, uh, making sure that you do business with people that align with your end goal. Uh, I very young, obviously started a couple of businesses and I had a couple of businesses not do so good. I think it's important to talk about losses. I had a couple of businesses fail that, you know, I tried to bootstrap from the ground up because at the end of the day, the business that I had jumped into, maybe the partners or the employees or all the business model didn't really align with my end goal. So being strict on that, you know, doing business with people you align with, invest the money with people you align with is very, very important to me.

14:50The second thing that kind of builds off of that is, you know, always holding true to your ethics and your morals because there's been situations where uh you know maybe i could have made an extra few dollars but i would have to go against my ethics or morals and at the end of the day it always pays off to be authentic um i tell people that you know when you're when you're authentic you really don't have a competition in this world because there's only one of you right so at the end of the day there's only one dawson again as long as i'm authentic as possible i'm not going to have competition because there's no one like me just like there's no one like Joe Blow down the street because that's who he is.

15:24So those are really, really important things for me. And then the last thing I say would be bet on yourself. If you're going to take a risk, the most highest payoff risk is to bet on yourself. There's been a lot of times in life as I was building businesses that, you know, maybe it wasn't the best play, but I knew that I was going to work hard and I was going to work smart and get it done. So I bet on myself and I ended up paying off really, really heavily in the long run. Fire Nation, do business with people that align with your end goals. I mean, it's easy to say, but I mean, you really got to make sure you follow through with this.

15:57Hold true to your ethics and morals. I mean, you have a gut, you have an intuition for a reason. Follow that. And better in yourself, invest in yourself. People are like, John, I've got an extra$10 ,000. What should I do with it? Should I put it in crypto? I'm like, well, what about betting on yourself? What about investing in yourself? I mean, what better long-term play can you make than in yourself? And Dawson, you shared a lot of awesome stuff throughout this entire episode. Give us the one key takeaway you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets when they look back at this episode. I think that it would still be the first thing I mentioned today is work smart, don't work hard.

16:34There's a lot of ways you can save a few dollars about, you know, maybe not paying for mentorship or investing in yourself because you think you know it all or paying for a service or anything like that. but it's going to take a lot of time. I like to look at everything. It's like, how much do I make an hour at my peak performance? And if there's something that I can buy out, hire employees and hire services or masterminds to cut that time down so I can make the most money possible for my hour of work, I do that. So I'm really big on working smart, not hard. And give us one final call to action for Fire Nation to connect with you, with your company, and then we'll say goodbye.

17:12Awesome, yeah. So the best way to schedule a call with one of my account managers is dfycommerce.com. You know, these guys work all the time. They're happy to take your call, answer questions, get specifics, and see how we guys, you know, can make a symbiotic relationship. dfycommerce.com. Get on a call, Fire Nation, learn more. Your time right now is worthwhile taking steps like this. And Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with DG and JLD today. So keep up the heat. head over to eofire.com, type Dawson in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with links to everything that we've been talking about here today.

17:50Dawson, 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. Thanks so much, John. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Dawson and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days, and we're talking step-by-step, visit thefreedomjournal.com, and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest-rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark, and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire.

18:36Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. Email me at john at EO fire.com with a subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15 minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you.

19:10Thank you.