<figure id="attachment_824" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-824" style="width: 337px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-824" class="wp-caption-text">Norman “The Beard Guy” Farrar</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_825" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-825" style="width: 429px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-825" class="wp-caption-text">Soap.Club</figcaption></figure>

Special guest, business coach Norman “The Beard Guy” Farrar brings us a wide range of business thoughts on our latest episode.

Join us as we talk about Norman’s expertise from helping businesses have success with Amazon, to starting various companies (like Soap.Club), to pivoting to upping his podcasting game in result of the changes COVID-19 has brought to all of us.

Norman was a kick to chat with, and we know you’ll love this episode as well!

Norman Farrar’s Website – https://normanfarrar.com/

Soap.Club – https://soap.club/

 

Podcasts

Lunch With Norm Podcast – https://lunchwithnorm.com/

(live on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook on Mon, Wed, Fri)

I Know This Guy…Podcast – https://iknowthisguy.com/

Transcription

Brian: Welcome back to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast, today’s show featuring Norman he is something quite different than what we’re used to, when it comes to interviews.

Let me tell you why.

We don’t focus as much on the reason why we picked him out to interview him, particularly for the show, which is his website, Soap.Club, we do hit on it, on how he came about it, and how he really thinks that it was a mistake to start that website. But he goes through all that when we get to it.

The rest of the time, he is really an expert when it comes to e commerce and especially in the area of Amazon.com. This is one of those that’s very business oriented.

So no matter what type of business you have, this would be useful to you. But off the grid business owners really need to hear what Norman has to say.

That’s why I included it on our podcast.

Join me at the end for a quick commentary, where we kind of go over some ideas that he produced really good episode. Stay tuned.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Entrepreneur, businessmen Norman, “The Beard Guy” Farrar stands at the forefront of the economic mega machine known as Amazon Marketplace.

As a leading expert with over 25 years of product sourcing development and branding expertise, Norm is an advisor to many and an inspiration to all throughout his career.

He’s worked with big brands including Mercedes, Coke, Dell, Microsoft target, Hershey 20th Century Fox, Molsons, Cadbury, and a wide variety of emerging businesses that are celebrating sudden escalation and profitability and sales as a result of taking action on his advice and proven methods.

Norm Farrar, Welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Norm: Hey, I’m very happy to be here.

Brian: Well, that’s awesome. So other than what we heard from your bio, why don’t you let everyone know a little bit about what you do on a day to day basis.

Norm: Oh my gosh.

So on a day to day, actually, it starts the night before, I’m one of these old guys, if you can’t see me, I’m an old guy in the business, but I always like to plan my day, the night before.

I always find if I know what I’m doing, things can always change. But if I plan ahead of time, then I know and then what I’ve tried to do for most of my life, is do everything that’s important first.

So my priority my task a gets the very first thing I do, before I look at anything I get into my main priority for the day, I check my emails only a few times a day.

And this is really important for entrepreneurs is that they have to go and clean up their b and c tasks. So I’ll take some time and just clean up those 5, 10, 20 things that I can get done.

The other thing that has been really great for my productivity is hiring somebody to go into my inbox and organize what I have to see and what I don’t have to see.

So it could be a question, it could be booking a meeting, or it could be an urgent response. I’ve gone from hundreds of emails down to a few emails.

So as long as I concentrate tasks, planet advanced, do a task, check your email once in a while. And also 100% you have to cut out other forms of communication.

I do I use a program called fronds to funnel all my communication either to me or an assistant, and also blockout, Skype and every other communication tool that I have, just for an hour at a time or two hours at a time, whatever time I need it.

I hope that answers the question.

Brian: Wow, that’s amazing. That’s gold right off the bat. That’s great stuff.

Just because we’re already into it here. Tell me more about hiring like an inbox manager.

How do you go about finding somebody like that?

Norm: I hire people for any repetitive task.

So you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re finding yourself in this roller coaster where you’re passionate about your product. Then you get to a point where you hire somebody and they’re never good enough.

Then you fire them and then you take it back yourself. You’re in the sales roller coaster.

It’s probably because you’re just not training people properly.

So what I’ve done is I have a camera on my screen, I use snag, it is usually pretty good, or loom, and I create tons of videos every day, especially if you’re starting out.

But what is repetitive?

What can be handed off?

My inbox can definitely be handed off, all communications.

So I have probably, I don’t know, maybe 8 to 10 communication networks, like think of it Slack, Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, there’s a bunch, and I’m probably forgetting a few.

But can you imagine just having everything going into one channel?

That if something comes up new, that you have somebody else logged into your account?

Is it important, or is it just the buddy saying hi, all you’re doing is taking the information that you would do on a regular basis, recorded. And that’s the beginning of training.

But the biggest thing that you need to do when you’re training and I learned this off the E-Myth Academy, Michael Gerber’s, famous book, I went through the E-Myth Academy.

And what it told me to do is, even if you’re a one person operation, one day, you’re going to be multiple people.

They all have to buy in to why you’re doing things, a certain way.

So one of the ways to start this, and that’s called a performance based culture. And that is getting people to do things on your behalf.

But getting them to do it extremely well, kind of like McDonald’s with consistency.

It’s creating an ESOP, or a policy and procedure. It’s defining why that’s important, your why you need that task to be done. It’s defining the key words that people might not know.

So for an Amazon seller, what’s FBA fulfilled by Amazon, what’s fbm?

You know, what Seller Central?

And so you can you can define these keywords for them.

So they understand, and then any prerequisites do they have to log in?

Oh, if you have to log in, here’s how you do it. If you have to set user permissions, this is how you do it a prerequisite before getting in to the SLP.

The most important part of an SLP. And SLP is a standard operating procedure is clearly doing multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple steps.

If you have to take your finger and drag your mouse up to the right hand corner, that’s a step. And then you can give it to somebody, you might have 20 or 30 steps. And then at the very end you have something that’s