David Carlin – Co-Founder of Residual Payments | Residual Payments & Passive Income

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About The Guest

Talking Points

 

• 00:00 — Intro
• 03:32 — David Carlin’s origin story
• 06:31 — How did David Carlin’s wife start her work and what was her job?
• 09:13 — What can an average person do to generate revenue/side hustle money.
• 13:08 — Opening a store on Spotify / getting into the recurring payments game.
• 16:44 — The best set up to sell online.
• 19:35 — Residual payments side hustle and how to make money as a payment processor.
• 24:57 — Working with difficult clients and merchants.
• 28:34 — The e-commerce playbook
• 33:35 — Tips on hiring a team and scaling a business.
• 37:28 — Do you need to work 7 days a week to be successful?
• 45:03 — The difference in marketing between e-com and brick and mortar?
• 53:36 — Advice to the people who burn out and how can someone be motivated by something he’s not into?
• 59:20 — Whether to invest in real estate or crypto?
• 1:05:50 — What advice would David Carlin give to someone who wants to start a side hustle or business?
• 1:10:11 — How can people connect to David Carlin?
• 1:12:24 — What keeps David Carlin up at night?
• 1:13:09 — The biggest challenge that David Carlin overcame in his life
• 1:13:51 — Who was David Carlin’s mentor and what did he teach him?
• 1:15:06 — Any book or podcast recommended by David Carlin
• 1:16:03 — What would David tell his 20-year-old self?
• 1:17:23 — What does success mean to David Carlin?

Show Links

• https://www.instagram.com/meetthecarlins/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-carlin-meetthecarlins-on-insta-b969161a1/
• https://carlinglobal.com/

Podcast & Newsletter Sponsors

• HUBSPOT – http://hubspot.com/successpod/
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What is the Success Story Podcast?

On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.

Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures, and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and insights.

He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their stories to help pass those lessons on to others through both experiences and tactical strategies for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

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Contact: Scott D. Clary MBA |416-522-5622 | scott@scottdclary.com

Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, business, company, money, payments, sell, merchant account, shopify, side hustle, hire, product, online, starting, merchants, podcast, payment processing, stripe, day, pay, set

SPEAKERS

David Carlin, Scott D Clary

 

00:03

Welcome to spinsters a basketball podcast about basketball. I’m Haley O’Shaughnessy, and I’m Jordan Mulligan. Each week we bring in guests that range from our very best friends to former general managers to actors and directors to current and former players, or the girlies as we were talking about trade rumors and game breakdowns, yes. But also this doesn’t really care about like the cow crews my bleaching his hair actually derail his time with the Lakers. Listen every Tuesday and Thursday to spinsters wherever you get your podcast.

 

Scott D Clary  00:36

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host, Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network, as well as the HubSpot Podcast Network. That’s my podcast network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by Dr. Jay J. Peterson. Now Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work. If you’d like any of these topics, you definitely want to go check out the show how to write and deliver a captivating speech, how to market yourself into a new job, how design can help and also hurt your revenue, creating a social media ad strategy that actually works. If these topics resonate with you. Go check out marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Today, my guest is David Carlin. He’s one half of the David and Patricia Carlin duo. They are entrepreneurs investors and thought leaders who have literally dominated the payment processing industry for over two decades. They helped bring many of the first ecommerce brands online including Star Wars, Sony Time Magazine, some of the first dating websites and first massive multiplayer games. Through his wildly successful e commerce business and multiple joint ventures. David’s ingenuity and integrity coupled with his art of the deal, make him a driving force behind residual payments. And his wife Patricia Well, if you’re in the payments industry, you’ve likely heard of Patricia Carlin. For more than 20 years she has been on the leading edge of digital payments in both the US and abroad. With a lengthy list of credentials. She is branded as one of the most influential people in payments. In fact, she was involved in the very first online merchant account in history is a world renowned expert. She’s earned millions of dollars in residual income through integrating payment solutions for businesses. She has amassed billions of dollars in career sales. She has crafted her career by representing the most prominent ecommerce brands and businesses in the world. And now, they not only help merchants understand how to build scale and grow their businesses through both Product Market Fit ecommerce solution sales and marketing, but they also teach people how to replicate their payment processing model. So we spoke about payment processing we spoke about the landscape we spoke about options for Merten merchants, we spoke about how merchants and or brick and mortar can scale their business, how they can find product market fit, how they can find the right team, how early stage entrepreneur can make him or herself redundant. And we all spoke about the opportunity that they set people up with as a side hustle, basically emulating what they do for merchants and allowing people start their own business and turn payment processing into a side hustle that creates residual income. So there’s some great entrepreneurship lessons for people that are starting their stores. Also some great side hustle opportunities that David breaks down. Let’s jump right into it. This is David Carlin. He is one half of David and Patricia Carlin, an entrepreneur and investor and a thought leader in all things payment ecommerce marketing sales brick and mortar

 

David Carlin  04:08

so we met in prison. No, I’ve affiliate originally outside Philly, but I’ll say Philly because I’m not going to tell exactly where I lived. Because my parents still live there. And you know, grew up there. And then I’ve always been an entrepreneur from day one and entrepreneur from what were those books. We got the magazines as a kid and you sold stuff and you got points to get all the stuff in the magazine.

 

Scott D Clary  04:30

I know. I don’t know what the name for it is, but I know you’re talking about Yeah,

 

David Carlin  04:35

yeah, I was just always a hustler. And you know, I had a great family and a dad to look up to who worked his ass off. I don’t curse out it doesn’t I will try to keep that

 

Scott D Clary  04:44

you can totally curse can totally parents. It’s all a bit.

 

David Carlin  04:47

I’ve always had the drive to be an entrepreneur my whole entire life, right just to be whether it’s wanting fancy things or whatever. I just had that drive and you know from doing that magazines A kid to owning a DJ entertainment company to doing other things that whatever we’re not going to get into that weeds legal now, but we won’t get into that. But other business other businesses from you know, I used to even buy call it Well, I used to buy cars and I find cars cheap and I drive them for a month or two and then sell them for a higher price. Like just things right. There’s different

 

Scott D Clary  05:21

ways to make money. It’s not working for somebody, any any way to make money. Yeah.

 

David Carlin  05:26

I mean, even my wife and I, we have such a same origin story where you know, I barely graduated high school, it’s complete high school, anyone who’s watching this, but college, we both lasted like a couple months. And we’re like, why are we both in college? If we own our own companies, we didn’t know each other at the time, but like, why are we listening to somebody else when we’re wasting our time. So we kind of met, I met Patricia over 10 years ago, I had been in I was in retail, I owned a bike company, we sold online, offline, our stores, all that stuff. And I always had employees, I had all this overhead no matter if you do a huge day, the next day resets right it doesn’t matter every single day resets every single day. And when I’m at Patricia, to hell you’re doing on that phone, where’s that money coming from? She had clients all over the world. Because she’s been in this industry. We’re about to talk about how we make residual income off of credit cards. And my unintentionally I started learning about the business for my wife, how her setting up people to accept payments online or offline. Once you set them up one time, she gets paid off that account, potentially one to 1020 years, however long they’re in business as long as they stay with her. So got married, literally met, my wife moved in two weeks later, not because of the residual income. Like I’m down, I’m about this life, let’s get this ready to like go go. It wasn’t that we just moved like, I’m very quick when it comes to doing anything good or bad. I don’t think about let’s just do it. And we moved and she’s the same way we moved in, got married the same year, and work together. I’ve never slept at night apart from my wife in 10 years. And we’ve built all of our companies together for 10 years managing multiple different companies. But our main our main companies are, you know, selling credit card or debit card processing, making residual income off of credit cards.

 

Scott D Clary  07:06

It’s such an it’s such a niche, like, it’s such a I’ve never you know, I talk to entrepreneurs all the time. And I think of different ways to start side hustles and to make money while you’re you know, you’re working your nine to five and then eventually graduate out of your nine to five. But I’ve never heard of this before. So walk me through how she even got started in this because it sounds like she was the OG in this. And then you you picked it up and you use blew it up. So what was the was it a job that she was in? Or what’s the story there?

 

David Carlin  07:33

She worked for payments company. She’s been in this industry for 23 years now. Okay, so she was actually like, I’m definitely gonna butcher some status wrong. But it was like flying out to Marin County to the Star Wars to like, Groupon, to all these companies back in what 98, Esther, whatever, if she was here, she would tell me, you know, when people were going online, when online payments wasn’t even a thing yet, it was only adult in the beginning, which you know, some people may know or may not know what wasn’t really involved in that. But that’s what she was doing. Right. So working for these payments companies and helping all these massive payments, companies, digitize their archives, etc, and start selling online. So she’s been there since day one of online selling working with the biggest MLMs, the biggest nuclear companies biggest Biz Ops, the biggest companies online and offline. So she’s a beast when it comes to online business. And then then myself coming from the marketing, team building, branding, social media world of just kind of all of our companies. That’s kind of where I like design and things like structuring things. I like doing things differently, right. So with her knowledge, and my marketing expertise, we kind of combined together and then just went to the moon with our payments company. So even to this day, I’ll land an account, that’s a big account, that’s life changing, or I’ll land somebody who come in and clean. And does my yard work. And I’m like, and they give me the square terminal, right? Hey, Ron, your payment, I’m like, why are you going with square I can give you a lower rate. So there’s opportunities everywhere you go. And like I always tell everybody is you’ve been around our business your whole entire life, you just didn’t know you could profit off of it, you didn’t know there was a middle man or middle woman that is making money on that transaction. Also, as a business owner, you didn’t know you could set yourself up Direct, which is also another thing that we’ll talk about today. So you’ve been around this business your whole entire life, you’ve shopped online, your whole online or offline your whole entire life. Pretty much everyone owns a credit or a debit card, so you understand how all both of them work. We now created residual payments unintentionally, which is the largest trading platform in the world, teaching people like yourself and everybody else, how they can make residual income off of credit cards for their own business, or for any businesses, they land that aren’t their own business.

 

Scott D Clary  09:49

So whenever you think about starting a business, you always want to figure out how to make money while you sleep. And that’s obviously difficult but you know, there’s ways you can do it like you can set up. If you’re non technical. You set up a course and you sell that 1000 times or if you are technical, you can be a developer, you can do like a self serve software product. And people can purchase that anytime and they can check out and you know, there’s a monthly recurring revenue. This, to me blows my mind, this is something that actually isn’t. And I want to understand this, that this particular industry that you’re in that you’re teaching people to do, that it’s not just owned by stripe, or by a square, or by all these other checkout. Now you’re seeing more of them in the news, you’re seeing fast in the news, and you’re seeing all these other companies in the news, like that was actually just a huge bus, right? So walk me through the industry helped me understand what the average person can do and why there’s this misconception that the stripes of the world own all the checkouts online.

 

David Carlin  10:45

Yeah, I mean, most people will actually, here’s the thing. I have a lot of clients who use stripe and PayPal, I keep them I’ll add redundancy, how many people saw online where they do $100,000 In stripe and give them more volume or PayPal won’t give them more volume, but then they just hired a marketing company. And now they do a half a million, I fill in that 400,000 or whatever it may be, right? So sometimes, I’ll tell people that like, don’t get rid of PayPal, if someone wants to pay with PayPal, and they have money in their paypal account, don’t lose a sale over me take that money, you know, like so. At the same time if you want to use stripe people, its ease of use, right stripe etc did a great job, which no shout out to stripe, but good you guys did a good job. But but you know, ease have instantly approved right? But stripe is what’s called an aggregator right and essentially as quick as your approves, as quick as you can be shut down, we hear all these horror stories of money being held accounts getting shut down a lot, especially as PayPal the same thing. And you just wait. Right? So you’re essentially renting a home when you go with stripe or PayPal, when you’re going with a traditional merchant account, which is what we teach, you’re owning a home, right? You’re making sure that you’re fully compliant. You’re going through extra steps. But everyone’s like, why don’t want to do the paperwork. Dave, I don’t want to take the extra day to do it. Because stripe gets me approved in 10 minutes. I’m like, what happened six months from now when all your money’s held, and you can’t fulfill your orders and your whole company goes under? Because you didn’t want to do one day of work. What does that sound like? Right? So, you know, we, when it comes to the payments, you know, this is that’s the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do is land merchant accounts to make residual income I used to literally golf almost every single day work from my literally this cell phone. That is it, creating a coaching or a training platform, whatever the hell you want to call it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. And we unintentionally started teaching people because people were asking us exactly to the context of this conversation. And exactly how I met my wife. What are you doing on that phone? How did you buy that? What are you doing? How can I do it? So we started teaching people offline. And once we saw Holy crap, people could do this. That’s the only reason why we built the platform. So yes, do we teach you how to win over stripe or PayPal? Do we teach you how to win over new businesses existing businesses? Yes, that is one part of the equation is the merchant account, setting up the credit card, the debit card processing, we show people how to be brand payments and business consultants after you set up the merchant account or switch them over or whatever it is, we then show you how to add all the other value added services from branding, payroll, marketing, gift cards, buy now pay later, blah, blah, blah. Any other ways you can help that business owner automate their business so they can be more profitable and more efficient, solidifies your relationship. You’re not a one trick pony, where you just sell or sling merchant accounts.

 

Scott D Clary  13:44

I understand. Okay, so. So let’s talk about let’s talk about the, the status quo, what people are usually exposed to when they start. So you’re the person that is starting a business, not the people that you’re teaching over. But the person that’s actually starting a business, the entrepreneur, say they want to start dropshipping and they open up, I want to understand so like laid out super simple, people understand cuz not everybody here has ever even operated in Shopify. So you open up a Shopify account, maybe you have some sort of plugin that dropships products, and then you’re presented with all the standardized checkout options. And I’m sure there’s like the Shopify option, and you’re probably gonna get some ads for like PayPal integration, and then stripe and whatnot. So where does your I understand all the value add stuff, but where does your core product? Where does that fit into the stack? And how do they actually execute that if I’m starting a store from scratch?

 

David Carlin  14:36

So if someone’s starting a Shopify store, the next step is to cancel your Shopify store. I mean,

 

Scott D Clary  14:44

no, no, it’s good. I like it, because all these easy options they’ve been they’ve had so much explosive growth because they they’re so easy, so simple, right? But obviously, there’s a cost that comes with that.

 

David Carlin  14:54

If you don’t, what happens is Shopify does a great job. Up, shout out to them to sort of you should partner with us. So we can stop competing, but I’m sure they don’t care about us. But Shopify, if you build a Shopify store, and you love it, and it’s great because it ease of use again, right, that’s how stripe everyone’s getting in Shopify ease of use, right, because no one wants to do any work as we know. So they get people set up, they set you up with Shopify payments, what they don’t tell you is, once you’re all set up, you did all that hard work, and you built your whole store and you love the way it works. You’re paying. Essentially, if you ever were to leave Shopify payments, but keep your Shopify store and call person like me to switch over your payment processing, but keep the same exact store, Shopify can charge even more up to 1%, for you not to use their payment processing, which makes it almost impossible for someone like myself to save you money. Now, with that being said, said in the same breath, we have a lot of our higher risk merchants, whether it’s their business model, the way they run their business, the products they sell what have you, where people don’t care about incurring that fee, because they need to, they need the volume, right? They need to keep scaling their company. So I would try to help someone move off to a different platform or plug into Shopify, what happens is Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, whatever you want to sell on, you want to sell on what we do is you fill out an application takes you 10 minutes, you get approved. And then we just give the, let me give it in simplest terms, it’s a few numbers that come that you plug in the numbers in your back end, it’s like, unplugging from one Wi Fi network and plugging into another one

 

Scott D Clary  16:34

I can everything like an API key, like would it be like an API? Yeah, I

 

David Carlin  16:37

didn’t know if we could go that we can go that. Just like keep it simple. That’s all it is, then triggers to the new merchant account. So everything front facing stays exactly the same. Okay.

 

Scott D Clary  16:50

And that API key, what you’re doing is now you’re creating a direct relationship with the payment processor, you’re skipping the tech piece, and you’re getting a much lower rate on that. That’s what that’s what you’re actually teaching over. So

 

David Carlin  17:03

imagine, imagine staying, let’s say, Yeah, let’s make an analogy would be Imagine having a retail store that stays exactly the same, but your landlord calls you and say, Hey, I’m gonna lower your rent, but everything stays the same. Gotcha. Perfect. Yeah, same store. So what would you just less money out of your bank account in the month?

 

Scott D Clary  17:21

Is it what would you recommend for somebody starting is for somebody starting to sell online? What would be the best setup? What what do you recommend? If somebody starts from scratch? say, Listen, I need to I need to figure out how to set up a store. You were just talking on the podcast, I don’t want to go to Shopify. How do I set up from from scratch?

 

David Carlin  17:39

Everyone’s completely different, right? So I don’t just like I don’t on our team, we don’t send like automated like messages online. Like, you’re like an entrepreneur like me, like we don’t do it. Like, everyone’s completely different, right? And I have a conversation just like I do with anybody else, usually in a gray sweatshirt, because I have 5000 of them. And what are you selling? What do we what are we going to set you up with today? That’s going to be good for you for another year? Or two or three? We don’t want to have to redo this again, right? Where do you think your company is going to be in two years? What do you because a lot of people as we know, they buy crazy point of sale systems or crazy terminals or crazy automation online. And sometimes it’s so robust that you don’t even use 90% of it. Right? Some people are just starting out. And they’re like, I need to build out a crazy website. I need a web developer, like how many products you have, like two, like why not just do one quick landing pages, right? I have ones you could get created in two seconds, and literally have that link for that one product or I have people that built out Shopify stores with 500 products and like, the all the all the sell, they’re like, No, on these five, well, what are we doing, you’re maintaining all these products that don’t even make you money. So everyone’s completely different. I just learned about their business. And then depending on their business, the funds, they have to start that business. I gear them in the right direction. Why do I do that one because I’m not an asshole. I’m a good person. But number two, I always tell my clients in the beginning, if you listen to me, because I’ve been in payments with my wife for over 30 years combined, we get to see the best marketers best brands to the best of everything. Because I see people’s numbers, it can’t lie, I see their sales, right. And if I point you in the right direction, with the right platform with the right merchant account with the right x, y and z that you specifically need for your business, I number one going to solidify that relationship with you. And number two, if I can show you how to make more money, can I make more money? No one’s ever said no to me on that. Right? So let’s say so listen to what I’m saying. Because I have a very vested interest for you to stay in business and for you to be successful, because as long as you’re in business, I make money. And then that’s just it. Right? That’s just the conversation. So I don’t know what platform some some people may go on a different funnel platform. They may not go on Shopify, it just depends. And then 25% of people who join and residual payments, which is our training program. That’s It’s not a real stat, but I think it’s a real stat should probably look it up before you just start throwing numbers out there are business owners,

 

Scott D Clary  20:06

enough of them are enough of them. Enough of them are business owners. Okay. And so let’s Okay, so that makes sense. So I under I understand I understand the value prop, I understand why this educating business owners on this is important. I think that it’s probably something that I would have considered when I was starting, I’ve started a few Shopify stores. And I’ve never really considered this because I think that there’s not enough education about all the alternatives and different ways to set up stores and payment processing systems and save us, you know, that percentage on that revenues huge, especially with volume, right? But yeah, what you’re talking about now, which I think is actually very interesting, it’s, it’s a side hustle opportunity. It’s the it’s the, you’re arming people with the knowledge of this. And then they’re going and selling. They’re going selling the solution, and then walk me through the actual side hustle opportunity. If you go to a merchant, and you pitch the solution, and you sell it, what are the dollars that somebody could make actually doing this?

 

David Carlin  21:02

So I’ll go rough around the bout, because the same thing we do on social media? I don’t, I was like, What can I make one? I don’t know how hard you’re gonna work. It’s like I don’t, there’s no, anyone who joins, right? I told

 

Scott D Clary  21:13

him compared to other side hustles. Because some of these things are a lot of work to do. And I think it’s this is a smart, it’s a win win. And I think that business opportunities, where your client is going to be making money or saving money, it’s an exceptionally not easy, but it’s less of an uphill when you’re trying to sell that product.

 

David Carlin  21:31

Think about it this way. And we’ll actually even say it, I always tell everyone, let’s get rid of a cell phone bill first, we can worry about being millionaires later if that’s what you want, right? A cell phone bill first, right? Because if once you learn, you can land in one account and you’re like, Okay, I can land three. But I always tell everybody, think about it this way. If you’re not a business owner coming, which you guys can hit me up, we can switch your merchant accounts, you know, put money back in your business, some people join, they’re like, I’m just here to switch my merchant account and take it over and save money. And I’ll be on my way, cool, do that no problem for for other people, like you’re saying who want it as a side hustle, or maybe a side hustle turned into a full time gig. I always tell her anything like this, right? Think about someone who wants to open up a restaurant, they have a dream of opening up a restaurant, they work out of a restaurant for five years learning everything there is about how to run a successful restaurant, they either saved up every single dollar and never did anything with their lives because they save every single dollar or they went in debt. Right and took out a loan, finally open up their dream restaurant, I have the ability and anyone else who joins residual payments has the ability to knock on that business owners door. Never say this, but be like, congratulations on your new business or your existing business. I’m now here to make a percentage off of all your hard work and all your risk. And when I set up your merchant account, I need you to get to work on your new partner that took zero risk. I’m now making I don’t know, half a percent point 2% 1% Depending on the account on all your sales. If you go under, I will try to do everything in my power to try to save your business and help you. But if you go under, I don’t have my house on the line. I just land another account in our our oldest account, which is mine too, because it’s my wife’s but it’s still mine. So I’m married to her is 15 years old, probably haven’t talked to that merchant in five years. What else can you think about setting up somebody one day, which we teach you in less than three days, you can learn how to do this and going after your first account, how you can land an account that could potentially pay you for two 510 years, you set it up once obviously, you want to keep track of your clients or else you’re going to lose your clients and texts and emails. But after you switch their merchant account, you’re their honorary business partner that has zero risk, but makes a percentage off of every sale. So everyone’s different it can be, you can make up to 2% on accounts on high risk. But I also tell people not to price people, you know astronomically because you’re not going to have it forever, right. But there are pricing programs that we do offer that people have access to where you can eliminate people’s fees completely and make 1%. So if you have a client doing $100,000 a month, you set them up, you did a call, you did an application, now they’re happy. A lot of people could use $1,000 extra a month off account if you’re making 1%. Like we all have bills. And that’s why I always tell everybody is like, I don’t want the big wins in the beginning. I want you to land your first account, like I said to get rid gets rid of a cellphone bill so that you can be like, I just met Dave online. I didn’t trust him. But now oh my god, I got paid. This actually works because I need you mentally to know that this works because I always tell everybody to exact point. If in 30 days from now, you’re like, I’m gonna go build an Amazon store, a drop shipping store or something. This doesn’t work. Call me when you do. I’ll set up a merchant account for you and I need you to get to work. I mean, that’s the way you got to think about

 

Scott D Clary  24:51

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25:37

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Scott D Clary  26:34

it seems like such an easy solution. And it seems like something that you know, you can set up, I’m sure there’s a whole sales strategy to it. And you probably set up some outbound campaigns and you identify your customer profiles, and you’re reaching out to these people. And then you have like, you know, your discovery calls and you’re going through and you’re trying to pitch them and close them and whatnot, and you have your whole sales process for this particular product. But what’s what’s the stop, because seems like a very low barrier to entry, what’s to stop a merchant from just turning around and being like, I don’t need you. Thanks for the info, I’ll do this myself and not give a percentage.

 

David Carlin  27:09

So for even a lot of our clients will have will kick them back, right. So that so the merchants, that’s where again, if you’re just selling merchant services, you’re a one trick pony, right? That’s where it’s not just that it’s all the other services. That’s why I say I’m not gonna get into all those today. But there’s 30 other servers not 30 probably close to it that you can sell after you learn the merchant services piece. Also, for all entrepreneurs, you know, you need to learn about this because you may be in payments for a year or two, you may be a lifer in payments, but you’re probably going to own other companies along the way. This is something you need to learn, regardless of whatever you do, whether you like payments or not, I don’t care, you need to take this training for your business. And you need to ask the appropriate questions in the beginning, right? You don’t just assume someone wants to switch with you. And that’s never actually I’ve never had anyone asked me that question. But when you offer someone value that, hey, I’m going to do X, Y, and Z, a lot of people are so busy on their own businesses that they want that person to handle all the support. By the way, you don’t have to set up terminals, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to handle support, we have all the teams that you get the leverage that will handle all that support for you. But essentially, when you become not a number, not Oh, I was paying 2.7 now and with 8.5 guy, right when you’re when I’m with Dave, he not only showed me how to put money back in my business, he showed me how to make money in my business, you become a valuable asset to their business, something that they can’t live without, right. So I’m at the belief, and that’s how we were successful and still are referral partnerships. And just asking people asking you the right question, if I could, for example, Shopify, if I could, you know, get you more volume, you know, you I make it to the same rate as Shopify. I don’t know if I’ll save you money. But if I can get you on a different platform that can save you money, but you have to move off Shopify. Would you move off Shopify? I’ll never leave Shopify. Glad I asked. Now I can move on to somebody who doesn’t want to work with me. So because of this past year, and everything, there’s so many people starting businesses, and most people just want to they love the business they’re in. So they don’t want to do anything else. They want to run their business, but they don’t realize they can save money. So when you come across somebody who just wants to run their own business, and you say, hey, what would you do if I could put 500 bucks a month month back in your business? What would you use it for? Why go on vacation or or I’d use it for marketing Great. After I save that money, we’ll have a separate conversation we got six grand to play with right now. I’m going to refer you to the best marketing company for your niche. Because I know that that six grand how many times you hire the wrong company, and then that six grand goes like this and then your business goes under because you trusted the wrong person. I’m going to connect you with the right person is going to help your business. So again, it goes on to asking the right questions in the beginning, but then not just leaving it at merchant services going into everything else and really having that consultation. with your clients the

 

Scott D Clary  30:00

way you’re supposed to be selling anyways, right? Like it’s always consultative, it’s always understanding all the pain points that they’re solving for and trying to figure out. Now I’m curious when you so that’s a great, that’s a great segue into sort of like a second topic that I want to go into when you’re scaling. Mostly ecommerce. I’m assuming I know that there’s probably a little bit of brick and mortar but I assume the bigger opportunity is econ. Maybe is that right? Or no? Oh, no. Okay, so Okay, so Alright, so then let me ask you that. So you’re you’re you’re putting payment solutions in EECOM. And brick and mortar, this like startup playbook, this this thing that you sort of deploy, and you teach people to deploy? What are some of those things you need to go through all 30? But I am curious for entrepreneurs that are trying to start brick and mortar or are trying to start their first e commerce Store? What are the things that you try and help them figure out?

 

David Carlin  30:56

First thing I actually did a video on the Sun ticket the other day, I just do random rants every semester you like random rants Go Go Go pause a beat the garlands to Docker Instagram, but

 

Scott D Clary  31:06

I was gonna ask you at the end anyways, I

 

David Carlin  31:07

don’t know, I’ll plug it up on multiple times. Your Follow, follow? Follow? Follow for follow. Now that wasn’t the number that was the thing. But sorry. Sorry, I always tell people in the beginning, right? Do you know if your product or service is going to sell? Yeah, no, it is? How do you know? I just know, have you gone out and given this product or service are free to people to test the market before we spend all this money? No. Why don’t you go do that? First. I’m not here to spend your money to spend your money, right? I always tell people, let’s start with the bare minimum of entry on the the easiest and quickest way outside of Shopify, to get your product or service online or offline. So we can test the market and see it right you don’t just create a story you can anyways and create a Facebook page and start running a million dollars net you can’t anyways and you still wouldn’t, right? You have to make sure that people like your product and service and and if you think it’s perfect, I guarantee you six months later gonna be like that was trash. Let me refine whatever it is, I’m completely selling. So that’s first and foremost is let’s get this product or service out there. I don’t care if we’re losing money. We’re actually making money because maybe we could garner video reviews back we can vote Garner testimonials, we can go Garni different use cases, and then find out what’s the core products that we are services that we need to sell. Number two, are you making sure your privacy policy terms and conditions refund policies? What are you going to do if you actually what if this goes viral, let’s say so it makes a video on Tiktok, which happens all the time. It’s random example, puts your product on Tik Tok because I love it. You’re a one person show and holy crap overnight your business skyrockets. But overnight, your business goes completely lender, you lose everything because you didn’t have the support in place. Are you prepared if this actually works? That’s another question that no one ever thinks about, you know, and then you could come into chargebacks chargeback problems, refund problems, automation problems. And then also, after helping and learning about their business and and finding them the best solution for the quickest and best solution for them to get started is usually about three or six months or what have you will have calls and try to reevaluate where they are to make sure that they’re not losing the drive that they had in the beginning for that business where they loved making pottery, right? And they’re selling it on Shopify, or what have you, oh, they loved training people for whatever, whatever skill they have. And then six months later, there’s they actually are successful, and they haven’t hired anybody. And they’re now pissed off in their own company, because they can’t do the art anymore. They’re handling all the day to day support. Right? So we want to make sure reevaluate where even if you think at a certain point, or even day one, if you have money, like let’s find out the quickest and easiest way, whether it’s using VAs in a different country, or someone in the US finding someone else who has a skill that can alleviate the burden of the stuff you shouldn’t be doing. So you can make your company more successful, quicker at the same time. And also, for some people who don’t have a lot of money, but have a great business idea. I will tell them, Well, you know, do you want to wait 10 years for this to be a success? Or do you want to do it into I want to do it into Okay, well, what are you missing today because you’re trying to do a million different things. You’re so great on social media, but you suck at video edek you suck at building the website. YOU SUCK IT support you suck at everything else. You’re so much gold online, people love you online. That’s what you should be doing. If you don’t have the money to hire employees today, let’s bring people into the company and give them sweat equity earned in equity, right? Let’s go get a videographer who’s starting out like you who wants to get their name out there and give them a small pay upfront but earned an equity always when people start in a sorry about that. Start a company, start a company with other people who are maybe like minded entrepreneurs like yourself, that you can all create a company together and build a so

 

Scott D Clary  35:08

so that’s smart. So you know, you focus on product, you focus on people, you focus on hiring for things that you aren’t good at making yourself redundant and all the things that you suck at. What do you do you suggest trying to find people to bring into the orbit? So you found product market fit, essentially, you you gave your product out for free people like it. Now it’s time to scale. So scale is marketing plus people then, and that will sort of help move in the right direction. But do you bring people in right away? Or is there a certain point certain revenue where you’d like to wait to, to hire and to onboard? That person? Well, I guess your personal experience would be something that you teach over anyway. So

 

David Carlin  35:54

you know what I do in the beginning, it’s funny, some of our companies, even the bigger the smaller ones, we have to get to the other companies. I do every job in the beginning with even the hires, even if we don’t have a hire, I will bootstrap as much as possible until I have to hire someone until it cuts into my day. Some weirdo and I worked way too much. But I need to know how everything every department works in our companies. So if I or somebody else ever has to get rid of that person to replace that person, then I know how that job works, right? Because I don’t ever want to be relying on someone holding me against the wall. We’re like, Dave, if you lose me, you have no idea how this works. I’m like, Oh, that’s true. I can’t fire you, I wish I don’t, you know, or blah, blah, blah. So you need to understand, even when you’re partnering, or hiring other people, you need to shout to them, and you understand what they’re doing. So if you ever need to replace them, or what have you. Now, the reason why I sent around an equity is you don’t want to have resentment, you don’t want to give someone 5% of your company, because they told you they’re gonna kill it for you, and they don’t. And then you have a bad partner. So if someone stuck with you, and you have to get rid of them later on in life, you say, you talk to big game, I love you, you know, for what you do online, if you hit this, two and a half percent, which you can talk to your attorneys, two and a half percent will get kicked in, if you hit this 5% If you hit this seven half in a certain time thing, and you can also have caveats in there that if you do X y&z that can be gone away, we can, we can touch on, on that later. Now, every single person I hire is a partner. And every single person I hire doesn’t really have a role. They don’t really have a role. We’re fortunate enough, where we have multiple different companies, I hire people, that’s why I always tell them the beginning. Listen, you’re getting, you’re getting hired to do this project for this company. If in six months, you don’t like what you’re doing, or you want to move on to a different department, you’re doing a good job or move up or move to a different company, you have to let me know. And then you have to be prepared to train the new hire and find the new hire and get them and train them for 30 days. And then you can move on to another project. By doing that. It gives everyone to know day one, I can move horizontal I can move up, I don’t I’m not gonna be stuck on a project and also in the same breath. I don’t care if someone has a master’s in this or they’ve been doing this for five years. I always ask them. I know you’ve been doing it for five years, and you look like you’re successful in it. Do you like doing it? I’m not hiring someone who’s who’s really good. I want to hire someone who’s could learn to be really good, but loves that, right? Because I want you to like your job because everyone who works for us works completely remote around the world. So that’s also another thing to constantly working on different projects and to feel like, like I tell her when else like if you have a crazy idea, like I’d said the beginning with Pat, let’s just try it. I mean, if it’s really dumb, you know, Bobby tell you. Let’s try it. You’re You’re You’re my partner, you’re not my partner on paper. If you’re not, you’re my employee, but we’re all working together for the greater good. If we all do this together, we can all benefit in the long run. And then a lot of people like that because they feel like a mini CEO in there does.

 

Scott D Clary  39:02

And now that you have this entirely remote workforce, I’m curious. How do you find the people because you mentioned you want people that love what they’re doing. You want to find people that are okay with moving and training and helping their peers succeed and upskill as well. But how do you find people that you can trust to work remotely? What’s like that one thing you look for? What’s the question you ask them in the interview?

 

David Carlin  39:26

So hopefully, no one’s listening to this who works for you. You know, I’m also like, you know, remotely right? We could if we wanted to, via I believe the Hubstaff via Hubstaff and we use Hubstaff for tracking all the hours etc. You know, I could have it on people’s computers remote seeing if they’re logging in and out every five minutes I wanted to but that’s like in jail, right? We do all of our communication through slack, right? We use Slack for everything we use Basecamp child to Basecamp slaps me, you know, but his sponsor Be please, but just you, okay? But base camps amazing for all the different jobs, right? There’s a special project, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, and you can tag the right people to it. Now, we’re very fortunate that our companies grow every single month, they never go down, they just grow. So if someone’s not doing their job, we know that because it’s like, everyone’s just way too busy. Let me also say this, nobody has any hours or days, they have to work. Nobody, there’s no agreement, but everyone works seven days a week, I will say, I will say that as well. So, you know, most people want to be home with their kids, they want to be home with their families we all know from this year, and no one has any roles. I mean, people know their pecking order, essentially, of newer versus older. But I’ll give you an example. First Person, let’s go overseas, because a lot of people like to hire virtual assistants, a lot of our employees in the US, and a lot of our employees are overseas, the first person I ever hired overseas, not the first person, but the first person for this team. For one of our companies. I gonna say his name, I’m gonna put his stuff out there. He was one of the first hires. And then now he runs a team of like, 50 people over there, right? That all we have all different departments. But he started with one where I trusted him. And because I gave him that trust, and really took care of from day one, he’s now flourished to running a team of 50 people. So in the beginning, it’s not about throwing out equity, just to throw out equity. It’s about earned inequity. It’s not about giving someone a high pay, and you’re gonna get better, I truly believe. And maybe what works for us is saying, Hey, you’re starting out at 70 grand a year, whatever, it’s still a random number out there, and you’re starting on this project. But I want to be very clear, you can move up across anywhere you want throughout working for us, we’re not going to watch you, we’re not going to watch your hours, we’re not going to you know, there is no set schedule, you will be working seven days a week. So I just want to be very clear about that. But you also will, if something happens, you gotta you gotta go with your wife to the ballgame, go to the ballgame, and then just get back to work when you’re done. So, when you’re saying that in the beginning for people, you’re gonna get a better caliber of person that really feels like they’re being appreciated. And rather than someone telling them what to do every single day, and a lot of it’s just, you know, I’d rather take less time to hire and take more time to fire Luckily, I’ve never had to any of these companies fire anybody will because some of our other people, I am not the one that does it anyways, but for the most part

 

Scott D Clary  42:27

a good team. Yeah, like no turnover. Wanna, I want to, I want to ask you to explain something because I know that you’re gonna get shit on for this. What do you mean, when you say somebody’s working seven days a week? Because if you don’t explain that, I know you’re gonna get you’re gonna get hate. So what does that mean?

 

David Carlin  42:45

means seven days a week, it means, you know, like, for example, also, when I’m running my teams, I don’t anymore are too busy. But let’s say I am going golfing. I won’t tell them. I’m going golfing. I’ll tell them in the office working, right? Because I want everyone to think I’m working 20 times harder now. Someone says, Hey, Dave, I want to take a vacation this week. Okay, what did you make sure everyone thinks covered. It’s not like, Hey, you work a week, you take off a month like that. Let me be very, very, very clear about that. But everyone knows that no one’s watching them. And they are working seven days a week for our companies. Now, if someone comes in and says, you know, I can only work two days a week or three days. I’m like, well, what’s the other project and we need people that are full time. So I tell people right away, this is a seven day a week job. But if you work two hours on Sunday, you get your work done, or you work for hours on Friday. That is weird. But I think people are really excited, because their ideas are being heard. There’s constant projects we’re working on. There’s constant evolution in the company of just just new things, new things, trying new things. We’re essentially like a startup that never stops

 

Scott D Clary  43:52

learning. I understand. Yeah, if that makes your life any businesses and whatnot,

 

David Carlin  43:56

they see a potential now. And a lot of sorry, a lot of these people have worked for companies before or at the same time I have a lot of people that have are building payments companies on the side that work for us, that we’re helping them build their company while they’re working for us. And I always just tell them, just be honest with me. If you end up wanting to go on your own, just let me know beforehand. If you ever want to go different apartment, let me know beforehand. But 1,000% If I can give you this much leeway to do to still live your life and enjoy your kids growing up or enjoy your wife or, or if you’re a young entrepreneur and you want to travel the world and work for us. I want seven days a week from you. And if I give you that much, there’s not my

 

Scott D Clary  44:35

understanding. So you’ve basically made the many CEOs like if they win, if you win, they win. Everybody’s winning. And that’s sort of like lighting a fire to get them to put in the hours when they have to put in the hours. It’s not like you have a set schedule. Nine to five Monday to Friday. It’s like we know what has to get done. Let’s figure out how to get

 

David Carlin  44:54

there. I mean, our companies to like yeah i The one thing I was always bad at, I would, I would, even in my earlier years, when other companies, I would think paying people more, or giving more would make them work harder. It wasn’t really that and now, with this model that we that we use, there has been people that have worked their frickin asses off, and now have gotten equity in some of our companies for no reason. Just surprise them, Hey, man, you got 1%, you got 2%, or, Hey, here’s a bonus, or, Hey, here’s this, like, you know, I think whatever you’re doing, whether you’re running a company, or you’re posting on social media, you should do it because you enjoy it. And if you’re hiring the right people, you enjoy being around them and creating whatever you guys are creating together. And it actually works and makes money. That’s a bonus. Or if you post something online, you enjoy creating it, and you got you went viral or got you sales, that’s a bonus, enjoy what you’re doing work harder than everybody else, because the same breath. I mean, no one wants to work the rest of their lives, right. And the people who are working for us, we’re training them that if you ever end up not working for us, this is what running a company is like, it’s not to say, I don’t care what anyone says one hour workweek, or the let me let me see your bank account from your one hour workweek, I’d like to see how much money you’re really and if you if you have something, that’s the lottery, I’d like to learn about it right. But unfortunately, owning a business or working for a business where you’re small CEO in the business is hard work. It is what

 

Scott D Clary  46:27

I want to talk about, I want to talk about growing businesses, I want to talk about strategies that you use, I want to talk about strategies that you teach over to both ecommerce and brick and mortar. So how do you scale a business? We talked to a product talked about people? What’s the marketing play, and you can break it into two? And I’m actually curious, because I’ve never spoken to somebody that scaled brick and mortar. I do speak to people that’s the scale EECOM but what’s the marketing difference between EECOM and brick and mortar for when you want to grow a business find more customers sell more stuff?

 

David Carlin  47:01

I mean, I would never go back to Brick and Mortar if you pay me. So the the one bike company that I had, you know, I’m an artist, it’s not a good art but I we designed like, like you could like come with your bike and be like, I want this picture on a bike with wooden handlebars with videos playing my wheels with these colors. Like I enjoy the art piece of it. Right? Like that’s what it was. We manufactured products also, it was super cool. So I enjoyed it. But man, like, you know, theft employees, like all just that a buying and selling it never again, right. So now, you know, our econ was crushing our store. And that’s where you know, before we sold the company, like I would have just had a smaller store and just really just focused on the economy of the end. But we got into payments, obviously. So the one big thing as well, what I always did is every single person that bought got a review, give us a review, give us a review of give us a review. Number two, you know, outside of asking people what we always do, you know, what do you like about my product or service? If I’m going to close a deal or a sale, whether it’s a product or a service, and it doesn’t go the right way? Or whether I mess it up and butcher this sales process? Or the customer? I’ll ask him, What made you not go with me? What? Or I’ll stop the conversation. I can see this going the opposite way. Where did I lose you? What did I say that was wrong? What messages I send you online. If I sent you a message online to try to get your business and you finally responded, why? Well, they may say message was great, Dave, but you doing a kickstand on your Instagram almost lost me or message sucked. But then your videos were great, right? Like, no one ever asked why? Why did you come here? How did you hear about us? You know, who can you and then in the same breath? Who can you refer me to? Again that spider effect? And then how can I potentially get a video testimonial from you that I can repurpose. So if you never video, visit my store again or my EECOM store? Your video could create more sales for me in the long run. I’m running you on automation, right so there’s all different weird ways to do that. But I really just think the passion like the passion I have for all the training and everything else is helping people and I’ve taken the you know from the DJing days the bike days all the other companies and I used to sell cars on stuff kind of the passion for like the Pandora’s but that’s the wrong phrase but like kind of trying to figure out how to do something better than other people like the

 

Scott D Clary  49:35

Rubik’s cube like some hats

 

David Carlin  49:36

yeah yeah, like you know those other words for that stuff, but that’s where seven days a week comes from right every single day. I am scared that someone else is going to or I’m gonna lose everything right and every single day I said this on another podcast is a second second. Second time I’ve ever said it. My my insecurities drive my sales. And what I mean by that is me either working harder, or you know me having to post more online or whatever, it’s because I’m so insecure that I need to win. So other people see me winning, that I keep working harder. There’s nothing wrong with saying that, like, I’ll post videos of me wearing a diamond chain. And I’m like, I bought this guy like the diamond chain, but I also bought X, I need you to like it. Most people can’t be so comfortable with themselves that they’re putting on some type of act or they’re reading some type of script. scripts don’t work buying leads, I don’t believe works in a lot of businesses. I believe in building relationships that then can pay you dividends in the long run. Most people don’t have long term thinking and when you’re starting a business, you need to have long term thinking So your business is a long I

 

Scott D Clary  50:47

agree with the long term thinking but the the insecurity piece that’s that’s a tough, that’s a tough thing to motivate people like it’s not good to be motivated by insecurity. I mean, it’s good to be motivated by wanting more that’s fine. But you in particular, that’s that’s difficult, though. No.

 

David Carlin  51:06

I used to be you used to be I used to. And then same thing I said with social media, I was posting on social media all over the place. Following you know, what Scott do today? Let me try he went viral. Let me try that. Let me let me everyone does everyone else’s dances, right, let’s say talk about tick tock. They’re doing things that are not like Matt, creating something using your brain to create something, whether it works or not, but enjoying the process is what people are losing. Like I said, if it works great, but you enjoyed it. So I have now like I tell people, like I will have stained shirts, you know, I will I will say the wrong things. I will curse, I will mumble my words, I will have a bright red face, I’ll have an oily face. I’ll be fatter for the day. I’ll have a bad video content. But I’m like, but I’m showing up. And I always tell everybody, if I can do this, I want to show myself maybe in a worst light for you where you can look at me and be like that Dave, guys like me? Well, that idiot could do it. I should be successful. I hope that drives somebody, right? And there’s no, I think when we’re all equal, and I can just maybe I maybe I put a little cloud online, right? Like I just, I’ll say now I bought a Rolls Royce regulations. And it was I was very happy. Yeah, thank God, it was a Rolls Royce coronated. One, I’m probably saying that because I need everyone to realize that I’m not a small, tiny justifier that I was talking about. But I posted the video of why I bought it and how long I waited to buy it. And you bet your ass I want it 1000 I bought it for myself. But if you think for a minute, I am not going to be loving every single person staring at me while I’m driving that, then I’d be lying to myself, but no one wants to say that. So if you’re as honest with yourself, that you could be with your merchants, you’re going to win and you say, hey, yeah, I bought this product for 100 bucks. I’m selling it for 200 bucks. But let me tell you why this is my markup. Let me justify why I’m doing this. And then you’re going to be comfortable with yourself and you’re going to enjoy the process more than trying to be something

 

Scott D Clary  53:02

so you’re all about and I think this is actually a good lesson. It’s all about just owning who you are being authentic, because you feel like in the world of social and I don’t disagree with you in the world of social media and all this, like people just put on like a face and they try and do what they’re supposed to do. And they’re trying to say what they’re supposed to say. And you’re saying, I agree that that kills sales. I think that also kills your will to create and to produce and to build. Because eventually like you how do you be motive? How can you be motivated? Always being someone that you’re not?

 

David Carlin  53:34

I think it’s impossible. Yeah, and just Life’s too short, man. It’s just it’s just, it’s just too short. You got to find the right person that you want to work about with, I always tell some people I was asked like, why did you join our program? Like because? Are you like I saw your ad and I always tell people they’re like, you know, Dave, with our courses, inexpensive, you know, obviously, I have upsells I’m a salesperson, I teach you how to sell. I am 1,000% going to upsell you very clear about that. But I’m gonna upsell you with value. That’s why I always tell people and I always say that, you know, they’re like, Well, Dave, why is course wanting to a couple 100 bucks and like, because I have to keep retargeting you. I’m like, let me start retargeting you, I’ll make it cheaper, like, you make my cost higher to acquire you. But people laugh and I also think laughter is such a great thing in business of, you know, we were talking Scott, I’d be like, like, we’re supposed to have a call because someone connected like, I don’t know, Scott, where are you from? It’s talk golf. Let’s, let’s find some kind of common ground to as much as I want to work with you. I’m also judging you if you know, you know, as if you know, such as much as you know, I want to work with you. How do you know it might not be in the opposite foot right? Where six months from now, I may fire you as a client, right? So when you just have that conversation with people, just like you would talk to your friend. There’s gonna be better love for you and hate you. But at least like we said, You’re being yourself and you can go to sleep at night knowing you worked your ass off You’re enjoying what you’re doing. And you’re enjoying the process of finally not only learning how to build a business, but potentially learning more about yourself and what’s in what some time,

 

Scott D Clary  55:11

what’s your advice for people who burn out? Why do they burn out? How do you not burn out when you’re going so hard?

 

David Carlin  55:20

Every single day I burn out. So if you’re not stressed, listen, I mean, some companies aren’t as big as ours, right? So some stuff, it can be enforced into stress, when you have 1000s of people 1000s of customers, it just naturally this is gonna be shit ever. There’s gonna be stuff that seven days a week happening. And, you know, it’s a roller coaster, every single day, ups and downs one day, you have your biggest day, next day, everyone hates you, right. It just is what it is. It’s how you compartmentalize and how you deal with that, to make sure that your ongoing right, essentially something happens with your merchant, something happens with your business, if you have a team you’re running, you want to make sure as the leader, you’re not showing that stress, right. And with burnout. You know, if you really come to a point where you’re just burnt out, move on, like, no one’s stopping you. Well, you know, as long as you have a place to live, or you know, don’t put yourself in a situation like I always tell people like, like, for example for that Rolls Royce, like I could have bought that truck the colonnade that again, said exactly 2021 5000 Last year, I could have bought that 10 years ago. But for whatever reason, you know, even though it’d be a big month, big year, I just waited, I kept waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, I always tell people that it’d be hot burn out, or you want to switch, you know, don’t take your money and spend it on a vacation or car because you deserve it. Because you worked hard, save the money. There’s you can miss a you could miss a trip, you can miss something on the weekend. But there’s nothing worse than missing out on a business opportunity. And what I mean by that is a potential new venture for yourself someone telling you about a crypto you should invest in or joining residual payments, like someone should tell you, you never know where some not having that capital, where you spent 5000 on a trip? Or what if that 5000 You couldn’t invest in that opportunity? Could it turn into 100? Right? So keeping yourself as liquid as possible. So if you ever do find yourself like, fuck this job, or fuck this company, I hate it. I’m making money, but I freaking hate it. I just wanted to do yoga in Costa Rica, whatever, something completely random, you have a nest egg to go do that. But if you’re spending money like an idiot, you’re gonna, you’re gonna burn yourself out with that and not be able to lose the burnout because you have no money to leave. And just

 

Scott D Clary  57:42

want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today’s episode swag.com. Now, you know if you’ve ever received a corporate gift or swag in the past, how many of those gifts did you actually keep? Probably not many, which is probably because the stuff that you got was not so great. I’ve gotten like a lot of stuff and trade shows, and from companies in the past that I’ve just thrown out the second I get it. So this is why you need checkouts. why.com, I’ve been on the receiving end of getting garbage gifts. I’ve also worked in companies, where I only had access to a really, really small inventory of stuff that I wanted to give my customers, my employees, and I knew that it wasn’t going to resonate, I knew that was going to suck. So what is swag.com? Well, it’s like swag upgrade, it’s the best place to buy custom gifts and swag that people will actually want to keep. So they sent me a box because obviously they’re sponsoring the show and I wanted to see what it’s all about, you know, I’ve worked in businesses, I want to make sure that the quality of their stuff actually was up to my standards, because I can tell you right now that when I get garbage, it goes right into the trash it like really goes right into the trash is that gonna get back from the tradeshow or the conference or whatever. So I received one of the custom swag boxes from swag.com. I love the unique packaging. So it was a beautiful unboxing experience. I love the actual products they sent me and there’s a whole bunch more that obviously they didn’t send me. But the stuff that they did send was absolutely beautiful. It was very high quality. And I can only imagine that if I actually got this when I was working for companies, I probably would have actually use it. And to be honest, I’m going to start using them for people that work on my show and in my company as well because I know that this isn’t just a novelty gift that somebody’s going to throw. It’s stuff that they can actually use. They have so many unique and customizable gifts that I’ve never seen anywhere else. They have custom yoga mats, they have custom Apple air pods. They even have branded kayaks, which I did not know was a thing. So they carry all these premium brands like North Face, Yeti, Nike, and more. And it’s all customizable with your company’s logo or artwork. So you’re even able to create custom swag boxes full of great branded items, and then you actually deliver them in a custom unique box. box with swag.com. They take care of all of your swag at their warehouse, and they ship it to individual addresses. Or if you prefer, you can just send it to a bulk location in one single shipment. It’s easy to manage from their online portal, which you obviously get access to. So if this is something that you think would benefit you, if you have clients, or customers or a team, and you want to go the extra mile, and you actually want to give gifts that people appreciate, which is the whole point of giving these gifts in the first place, go to swag.com for the perfect swag and custom gifts. Right now they’re giving everybody who’s a success story, podcast listeners special offer, it’s 10% off your entire order, but only when you go to swag.com/success and enter promo code success 10. Remember, for 10% off, go to swag.com/success and use promo code success 10 Well, that’s why you invest in things that pay you that’s why you invest. That’s why you invest. Like so what’s your income? So what’s okay, so yeah, exactly. So what’s what’s your opinion on, on investing your assets and things that make you money versus being liquid? Because if I invest in real estate, or if I invest in crypto or stocks, or if I even put all my money into a course, or if I buy a business, I’m no longer liquid, but now I have a revenue generating thing, or, or or potential, you know, a capital gaining thing. What’s your what’s your opinion?

 

David Carlin  1:01:27

I Oh, well, let me let me talk about residual. But when people join me digital payments, they’re gonna join, like our high ticket like we have, we have programs that are six, nine months, or a year. They’re not cheap, you guys, I’m not gonna get into it. But they’re not they’re not, they’re not expensive. But they’re, they’re very great value for what you get. But they’re not, they’re not cheap for some people. And I always tell people listen, can you afford this, I don’t want you to give me your last dollar, because then it’s going to translate into your sales, you’re going to be so desperate to get that money back, that you’re going to go so hard that you’re probably not going to close deals or you’re going to have quick accounts, because you’re just you’re just out for money, you’re not out to build relationships. And you know that that’s the main thing, when when people are starting their companies to make sure that you know, they, they have the capital as well. Also to sustain the company later on, right, so you don’t go and start a store. And, you know, have 10 grand, but not 30 grand leftover if whatever, whatever, whatever happens. So when actually, you know, it’s funny enough, no one will ever say this, I completely lost track of your question.

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:34

You’re, you’re you’re like going to it, then I thought you’re going there? No, the question was, if you’re trying to balance out the risk, right? When you invest in something, there’s risk? Oh, yeah, I guess I got and then like, so you put money in something that pays you back? Or do you put a percentage of your money in a portfolio and then you keep some liquid? You can’t be liquid and invest in most cases at the same time?

 

David Carlin  1:02:56

Yep. So guys, anyone ever is on a pocket? So just just say, if you don’t remember to stop, because I was about to go on a tangent. I’m like, I’m probably gonna go. So left field people who watch the talking have no just to say. You know, we haven’t really my wife and I are partners of everything, right? So it’s always a joint conversation with whatever we do. And we haven’t, I don’t really invest in many companies where we don’t own them. I have crypto, I have real estate like this out of markets crazy. We’re going to sell our house and probably make $2 million. I’m super excited. And like less than six months. I didn’t intend on doing it. We had some real estate properties, but I’m sorry to diversify a little bit. But payments just pays so much money that I don’t really don’t diversify that much. Really, I I keep that capital there. So that, like we just we just built the whole entire CRM, we wrote the whole entire code for it since CRM is launching soon. And it was great, because now I have an imposition that yeah, hire the best hire the best. Yeah, let’s do that. Yeah, let’s try that. Now. We’re putting on live events. Yeah, hire all those celebrities. Like we have Rick Ross Ray Kwan. Grant Cardone are always celebrities are gonna be at our events because yeah, do it hire this I now I’m in a position where I can because I saved Yeah, instead of just kept investing investing, that I can now build my own companies now. When it comes to crypto or investing in anything else besides you know, if you’re investing in building your, your training company or your to make residual income off of payments, because you know, once you join, this is something you have the rest of your life. It’s not like you bought a product, and then it depreciates like payments is gonna be around forever. So let’s say you pay 10 grand to work with us for a year or something a random number. You know, that’s your only thing I don’t want you buying leads. I don’t want you doing anything else. But I truly believe I’ve never like a Scott if you told me something tomorrow like Dave, you know, this coin is going to double or this or this housing market by this house. We can sell it. Let’s say it was 50% of my income and you were like, This is guaranteed. I won’t do it. I won’t work my whole entire life. If to take a gamble on one thing, and that could take all the money I took to work, I see so many people that are successful, and then bet on one thing because they need that next level, and they lose everything. So never go more than 10% of what you’re worth into anything.

 

Scott D Clary  1:05:15

That’s smart. I like your ideas about investing because you you literally live in a space where you’re asking people to invest. But still, it’s important to know that that there’s there’s cashflow issues you could run into if you do get other opportunities. And I think people overspend sometimes on investment. And they don’t realize that life happens. That’s also an issue.

 

David Carlin  1:05:39

I love it. And that’s where even the you know, it was just so it was such a weird feeling. To talk to my wife, I was like, I want to buy a Rolls Royce. So you’re good at like, you know, having our cards, but yes, you’re gonna get it like it’s just, and by the way, I am going to finance I’m an idiot. So I’m not going to like cash in that car without all my cash. But like, I could easily here’s a check. Give me the car. Yeah, but I want that capital i You never know, I don’t really care. I just want my capital, right? Cash is king. So it’s just so amazing outside of like the car purchase, because who cares about the car purchase, but the business to be like, Hey, Dave, I got this, do it, I got this, do it. Like, I don’t have to I can be like, let’s say, Scott, let’s say I’m worth 10 times more than you, let’s say I have a million dollars and you have 100,000 We got we start the same exact company, you may take five years to get to a level I can get to in one because I have the funds to hire the best of the best. Right? So or hire somebody. And they suck. And I spent I mean, not much. I’ve paid for some stuff. 30 grand 40 grand 50 grand, didn’t work out, I gonna get the next person. Because I’m in that situation where you may have put 30 grand out and just use an array. I’m not saying you personally, you may have put 30 grand out. And that was your whole nest egg. And now you’re like, just shot it all on one. Guess I’ll work for another year to save up to try to that again. Like that’s crazy to me. Right. So that cut also goes back to the beginning of getting early investors parting with people. So you don’t have to keep putting out money, right? A videographer may cost you $100,000 A year for whatever it may be. bring someone in and give them equity, it may only cost you 20 grand a year because they have equity in your company. So there’s all different ways to structure a deal just depends on their company. No

 

Scott D Clary  1:07:25

smart. Okay, let’s I want to I want to just give you the floor any other like closing points that you wanted to bring up? Because then I want to do a couple rapid fire to, to close it out. But I guess I’ll give you the floor in a second. But like, last thoughts for entrepreneurs starting something, what is the most important advice you give over for somebody that wants to start a side hustle business, whatever it is.

 

David Carlin  1:07:52

Just be unique. You know, like no one needs another person who’s doing the same old crap. And that’s why even in payments, right? Like that’s where we’re trying to teach people to be unique. Like, don’t just be a one trick pony, and whatever you do. And unfortunately, with social media nowadays, right? And I’ve said this before is, you know, usually back in the day, you know, let’s say you and me Scott lived in the same neighborhood. I got oops, sorry. I got I’ll let me put it back on 41 seconds. Stupid camera. See, I should even us so let’s say you and me live in the same neighborhood right back in the day. There wasn’t social media, and I got a nicer car than you right? I just saw you. And I’m like, Yeah, screw you, Scott. I just crushed you. Right. That’s all I know. That’s my environment. Now every single day we wake up, whether they’re richer or better looking or more successful, you see it online, right? So when you’re starting out, whether you’re old or young, like you need to not worry about what anybody else is doing. I always tell people when they’re building their payments, copy, like Dave, just see what squares doing stripe or Paypal or anything. I’m like, don’t give a shit. I don’t own their companies. I’m like, if you have enough time to worry about what they’re doing or not spend enough time on your company, have no one. And the other thing is, is if nobody’s talking about you, you’re not making enough noise online. I don’t care if it’s good or bad. 10 people a day should know about your product. You should be posting every single day and written screaming every single day networking everywhere about your product or service. Like we said before, are you prepared? If it actually works? What are you going to do if it actually works? Number three, do you have cash flow setup for this company for years, six months, a year, whatever it may be? And lastly, why are you doing this? What’s the Well Dan did and he’s successful. Okay, but are you? Are you if you’re doing this because you just want the money just say it that there’s no problem whatsoever. But what is the plan of why you’re doing this and how are you going to be different? Or if you’re like, David, I don’t really give a shit about being different. I just want to make money to better myself. I know that I know what you’re doing right but find somebody else Whew. It’s hard to say this because I’m different when we mentor people, people pay us a week, we truly help them. But try to find someone, maybe you will you can find from referring to a friend who’s maybe been in that business before to get some insights. Because why should you have to learn by either taking longer or spending more or making mistakes, right? Watch podcasts like Scott like, like, that’s free, right? Podcast, like learn from the just watch podcasts from all different people. Like maybe you’re gonna watch this to be like, I’m glad I watched Dave like, now I know, I never want to do what he does. Now, I feel like, damn, I thought my life was crazy. I feel good about myself. Like, if that’s what I did for you. I love that. Like, I love that. That’s what inspired you. Right? So watching podcasts would probably be the biggest thing I would say, to learn about different businesses so that you shouldn’t have to learn and then when you think you should launch, maybe launch months later, right? We don’t want that instant gratification. Again, it goes back to that Rolls Royce. When you see that post, I said I wanted this 10 years, I wanted this my whole entire life. But I waited till I was 38 to finally buy it. I could have bought it probably 10 plus years ago, but I wait Well, they didn’t have the car that but to but I waited because I wanted to make sure that my family myself and everything else taken care of. And also, let me let me say this. Everyone talks about wanting to be successful. Make sure your family is successful as well. Well, that’s why I’m still going my whole entire family on both sides is going to be taken care of when I’m done. I’m not gonna be the rich person sitting up here and they’re all still working. Everybody in my family is gonna be taken care of. So sign something bigger than yourself. That can also drive you I

 

Scott D Clary  1:11:43

love that. I love that man. Okay, most importantly, where do people go find more about your socials website everything you want to do all the links you want to drop?

 

David Carlin  1:11:53

Why need comments on lines? My numbers have gone down and oh, let me say this really quick. I used to do all those stupid Instagram things. When you join the camp. You joined the giveaways and my Instagram blew up. I don’t ever do that. We have 180,000 Probably 90,000 People actually follow us there 90,000 are real people. But it didn’t work right and I’m getting I don’t give a shit what people say. So if you’re gonna if you’re gonna go online, and you’re gonna follow meet the Carlin’s meet the Carlin’s on Tik Tok meet the Carlin’s on Instagram. It’s just free business advice we give out daily for you guys you don’t have to join residual payments but if you want to join residual payments, you’re like, hey, this sounds kind of interesting. I want to make residual income of credit cards. Do not join if you’re willing not willing to work your ass off if you’re not coming to work your ass off. You mean nothing to me, right? I am not going to give you mindset I don’t give a crap about your mind I keep crap I care about making money I will help you and I I don’t mean that in that sense, but I’m not looking for people to join to drag along and be a part of something where you see a lot of other programs where they don’t give a crap if you’re successful or not. And I do our program is building it’s a Costco model where everyone working together by all of us working together we all make more money so it’s strictly about closing accounts so residual payments.com residual payments on Instagram you can look up our names David Patricia Carlin See us on podcasts, newsletters, all that stuff. And then lastly, if you guys have never been featured on somewhere you paid to get if your whatever take those off of your website hit no one believes those anymore right so you say as featured on like no like just Just be yourself you know I’m saying like stop following all the trends be as comfortable as I on to say this stuff on camera that may be good or bad and enjoy the process of building a company and I wish everyone who is going to build their company whether it’s well as a residual payments or not are following us I meet the Carlin’s I wish everybody and yourself as well Scott human much success in your journey

 

Scott D Clary  1:13:52

thank you man can we do rapid fire to do some last insights that you

 

David Carlin  1:13:56

fuck no no I was good yeah

 

Scott D Clary  1:14:00

all right. All right. What keeps you up at night? What keeps you up at night?

 

David Carlin  1:14:06

Every single night what keeps you up at night sometimes when I take those weak gummies

 

Scott D Clary  1:14:11

to my sleep man, that’s the opposite opposite effect.

 

David Carlin  1:14:15

bricking Heydo and I so we’ve logged as a kid and then I wake up in the middle of night thinking oh my god 1000s of people know me online I just put a video what are they thinking people are judging me I should leave I should leave to cancel that’s probably the most random answer you’ve ever heard but it’s just businessman I’m I’m a million mph as you can probably tell and just constantly innovating and think of new ideas keeps me up at night and the excitement of the next day of what’s going to happen keeps me up biggest challenge

 

Scott D Clary  1:14:45

you’ve overcome in your personal life what was it

 

David Carlin  1:14:51

finding the right people to hang around when I was younger like I said I was a DJ for a long time and you know drinking and all that stuff now but never like hardcore drug stuff but drinking and stuff like that and partying and hanging with the wrong people that when you’re the one making the money, and you have all the people around you, that maybe don’t have as much money and you’re trying to help people, not that they’re bad, but paying for everything or doing everything, it’s not helping you, you need to surround yourself with people that are either better than you are on the same wavelength. You’re not saying get rid of your friends. But when it comes to building a business, you need people who can challenge you every single day, not bring you down.

 

Scott D Clary  1:15:27

If you had to pick one person in your life that’s been a mentor, or just an incredible person. Who was that person? What did they teach you?

 

David Carlin  1:15:35

My wife. She didn’t hear that. But she’s not a mentor to me. But, you know, she teaches she taught me how to grow up. She taught me how to really, you know, because the one thing is with a lot of people I hear, it’s like, I love the art of stuff. Like if you asked me to open up my books and tell us how much we made this month, I don’t know, the bank accounts are still growing, like so that I’m really horrible with that, because I enjoy the art of building stuff. I don’t really care about the monotonous day to day stuff. So she taught me how to grow up. And really, you know, even though you’re becoming successful not to spend every single dollar and how to save how to really hang with the right people and to have a long term success because I always as a young person, found myself scaling companies. And then once they scaled, I was like, I should rejoice my success. I am God. And then literally, it goes down. We started another company, right? A lot of people can probably relate to that. So it took growing up. But it took finding the right partner, which we teach a lot of couples as well, the right partner to balance me, and she’s not perfect, but to balance me to make me the best version of myself.

 

Scott D Clary  1:16:41

I love that. A book or podcast you’d recommend.

 

David Carlin  1:16:45

I’ve never read a book in my life. But I do have this book next to me. I read one page, I swear to you like you’re lying. I never have. It’s called fuck being humble. My wife bought it for me cuz he’s like, you would actually read this. I’ve been planning on it. It’s been sitting I’m gonna read one.

 

Scott D Clary  1:17:02

I’ve never I’ve never heard it before. So I’ll check it out. I’ll check. It sounds like a good book, to be honest.

 

David Carlin  1:17:07

Yeah. Um, and I watched some of your pockets and your podcast is amazing. I think people should definitely follow up your pocket. So I’ll give you a selfless plug. Thank you. You didn’t tell me to say that. I

 

Scott D Clary  1:17:16

did not tell you to say that. I always get people plugged my show. Thank you.

 

David Carlin  1:17:21

I think I think you’re doing a great job. You know, we have our pockets to launch that it’s called betting on us. It’s certainly a couple podcast where we’re bringing couples on and talking about talking about how they bet on each other to build up their company. So I think your your podcast is something everyone should listen to who wants to be an entrepreneur and human.

 

Scott D Clary  1:17:37

If you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be

 

David Carlin  1:17:46

stop caring about what everyone else thinks. Yeah, I worked so hard. I tried to show people I was rich when I wasn’t and still do it a little bit but not as much as I just you know just you know you know back in the day were like the coach loafers you know, you just saw that you’re driving around dad’s car to try to stall the dumb shit that you do it’s just dumb stuff which that I wouldn’t change anything I have done for anything because every I take everything good or bad as an experience. But really you know not taking everything for granted and and and just being comfortable my own skin I probably haven’t been comfortable with myself and probably even tall was like mid 30s I was still very uncomfortable. I still am uncomfortable I finally like you probably see on this podcast. You know just be yourself if you know I can do this you guys can do it so you know enjoy what you’re doing. You know and we see on social media some people that you’re like how that parada Hello People love his persons because they are who they are right so whatever you do is whatever your life is going to be about. Do what you love do it from the heart and if you make money while you’re doing it, you’ll one twice I love that

 

Scott D Clary  1:18:58

and then last question what does success mean to you

 

David Carlin  1:19:04

it’s like I said you know it’s just a success means to me when I’m finally done that all my family’s no one has a mortgage no one has a car payment if they want to start a company like I’ve been telling our family members while investing in companies but just more longer term every single person on both sides are fairly taken care of. And then next year my goal was to buy a plane I always wanted to buy a Rolex got a Rolex always want to buy a Rolls got a Rolls always want a fancy house got that. My next thing is a plane after that. I am done. I’ll probably always still be working but like that’s my that’s what you know, I finally got big teeth, my veneers which I don’t really care. I always wanted them once I smoked too much that other kid and still do I don’t really care but when I was younger, I always saw the guy the older white guys, which is random scenario at the country club and there’s all different other races there but just this scenario for whatever please don’t anyone racing your thing. I’ve all different friends. family members. But I always do like the movies, the old rich white guys with the big white teeth, right? I’m like, that’s what it looks like when you’re rich. Like, I always want that. So. So now I got that. So, you know, being able to tip people and take care of people, we do so many fun foundations, we tip people, I’ll be out to dinner $100 Bill, boom, here’s 104 Yeah, there’s no video behind it, I walk out before they get it, just taking care of people and seeing the look on their faces or not seeing it and knowing you’re helping people. That’s kind of the cool thing. And that’s why I love residual payments is I finally have a platform where I don’t have kids with my wife, we have three dogs, but I built something that essentially is changing now essentially it is there’s hundreds and hundreds of people making residual income, I’m changing their lives that essentially is going to be the catalyst for changing their kids lives. So I mean, you’re paying me to do it. But I you know, it is what it is but but at the same time we give last a freeway but how cool is that, that? You know, they’re also instilling this a lot of people as well who are joining our program are bringing their kids on as partners who are working them as a team, all families working together. So there’s no legacy there’s no anything, just be a good person when you’re here. Enjoy the process of what you’re doing. And hopefully you find success in the.

 

1:21:31-Ad

Hey, everyone, welcome to comeback stories, a new podcast with a goal of reaching as many people as possible to remind them that they’re not alone and that everybody has a comeback story within them. I’m your host, Donnie starcoins. And I’ve witnessed countless transformations in my time as a mindfulness teacher and high performance coach and one of these inspiring stories was born from a connection that was made from one of the best friends I have in the world. And now my comeback stories co host Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller together Darren and I want to help you and others experiencing mental health struggles or any other setbacks in life by telling our own comeback stories and drawing other athletes and celebrities to open up to share their own personal success journeys. Our first episode will drop July 11