#lost a kid in a crash summer before sophomore year; lost another kid to cancer later that year
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Self-Made Millionaire Matt Clark Shares How to Build Your Own Ecommerce Company
Pay attention to expenses and double down on what works.
March 31, 2020 8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Growing up near Houston, Matt Clark didn’t seem destined to be an entrepreneur. He struggled after his parents divorced, comparing himself to kids with two-parent homes and seemingly happy lives. In high school, he hung out with kids going nowhere, doing drugs, and even selling drugs.
Fortunately, he never got into some of the same legal trouble as his friends. Still, Clark recognized his risky behavior threatened his hazy but ambitious dreams of one day running a business. He knew he needed change. Clark left Houston without telling any friends and spent the summer in Austin, Texas, to reset and distance himself from bad influences.
Clark’s aimlessness finally began to dissipate during his sophomore year of college, when he read The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield. “It was like the book was written for me,” he says, remembering how he tore through it within days. “It sparked my passion for entrepreneurship.”
That passion proved a powerful driver: He joined the college’s business-plan team as part of the undergraduate entrepreneurship program, and graduated near the top of his class with dual degrees.
But after graduating in 2008 amid the economic crash, Clark sought refuge in an investment banking job at Citigroup rather than pursue his then-hazy entrepreneurial dreams. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do at the time, and someone told me to work for a big corporation for three to five years and learn the ropes,” he recalls. But almost immediately, Clark realized that following standard advice would only get him mediocre returns. To build something huge — something bigger than he could even imagine — he had to follow his gut and fast.
Scratching the Entrepreneurial Itch
Clark skipped the hand-wringing and second-guessing to quit his banking gig just seven months into the job to launch a website selling health supplements. When he expanded to Amazon soon after, he watched in disbelief as his sales mushroomed, far eclipsing the site’s volume. Soon his business had surged from selling 10 to 11,000 products on Amazon.
To fuel that astronomical growth, Clark immersed himself in the then-fledgling community of ecommerce entrepreneurs. He attended seminars about Google advertising and read every sales and business book. “This helped me go from zero to $2 million in revenue, but I was scaling so fast that I wasn’t tracking anything,” says Clark, who was so focused on that top-line number he didn’t pay attention to things like hard-line expenses, labor and profit margins. If he had, he would have quickly seen that his booming business was operating in the red.
This unsustainable growth came to a head when he got a six-figure credit card bill and realized he didn’t have the cash flow to make the full repayment. “I’d been so focused on sales that I didn’t pay attention to my expenses,” says Clark. “I realized I had to learn to produce profits, not just sales.”
Facing such financial strain, some entrepreneurs might have tightened their belts. Clark made another bold move instead: scraping his bank account almost clean to spend $10,000 to attend one of renowned life coach Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery events — even though he was barely making ends meet. “I was desperate,” he recalls. “I needed to meet others as motivated as me and figured anyone willing to pay $10,000 must be pretty motivated.”
There he met someone who later introduced him to Jason Katzenback, a serial entrepreneur who was looking to dive into the next big idea. Together, they decided to help aspiring entrepreneurs build ecommerce companies while avoiding Clark’s mistakes. “I learned how to build a business in college and attended all these courses and events, but I encountered lots of challenges,” says Clark. “There was a better way to teach this stuff.”
Founding an Ecommerce School
With Clark’s supplement business now out of the picture, he was able to focus on building a new company with Katzenback: Amazing.com. One of their programs, Amazon Selling Machine, helps people create private-label businesses selling physical goods on the rapidly growing platform.
They guide students step by step, from choosing a product to sell and finding suppliers to marketing agency. The videos, community support and access to business tools usher newbies through the sometimes painful early stages. Customers can also leverage a mentor network to connect with someone who has successfully navigated similar challenges.
Jason Katzenback and Matt Clark hosting an Amazing Selling Machine tutorial.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
Amazing urges entrepreneurs to focus on high-quality products and take packaging seriously. “It sounds crazy to me now, but I didn’t do that with my supplement company,” admits Clark. “In my rush to get a business up and running, I sold the first thing I could get my hands on. Some of my early products had terrible packaging, while the ingredients were pretty much the same as everyone else’s.”
Clark counsels sellers to picture a real person — someone like their mother, brother or daughter — who will experience the product. “The better you can make that experience, the more likely your business will succeed long-term.”
Not Living Up to the Amazing Name
By 2015, Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their annual live event and had a team of around 50 working at its Austin headquarters — but the company was teetering on the edge of ruin. That year, Katzenback’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer, prompting him to quit the business temporarily to focus on family and leaving Clark to steer the ship solo.
Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their 2015 annual event but was on the brink of ruin.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
While Katzenback was away, Clark pivoted Amazon Selling Machine from a premium-priced, intensive course to a low-priced monthly membership, hoping to help even more people build businesses. “I tried to go wide to appeal to everyone instead of going deep into a niche,” he explains.
It didn’t work.
“I made several bad decisions fueled by blind optimism and ambition,” he shares candidly. “I thought, What got us here won’t get us where we want to go. So I completely threw away our main product.
“We were stuck with a massive operational load, including $40,000 monthly rent, and were burning through half a million dollars every month,” he continues. “I had to lay off half my team and came within a week of running out of cash.” Clark found the experience personally devastating — he couldn’t sleep, eat or bear to let his mind linger on the employees he’d lost.
But he also recognized that the Amazing.com live events were a bright spot. The company continued to host the live events, and the joy he saw on members’ faces was like a salve for his soul. “They kept telling me that our original program changed their lives,” says Clark. “I realized we just needed to do what worked.”
Humility, Discipline and the Right Kind of Growth
Clark refocused the business on the original, premium ecommerce training program. By slowly expanding from there, he is looking forward to sustained growth.
He shares that the struggles taught him humility and how to spot customers who are about to make similar mistakes with their businesses. Most importantly, it taught him to be careful about hiring because others’ lives are affected.
Clark also advises not to become too risk-averse. He counsels his customers to manage risk carefully so they can aggressively pursue their targets. “We could have discovered that the new product didn’t work by simply testing it before we threw away our flagship product,” he points out.
Now that Clark knows how to take smart risks in business, he also combines caution with adrenaline in his personal life. He practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu several times a week and has spent his off-time earning his helicopter pilot’s license in Hawaii and attending Porsche driving school.
Life outside business: Matt Clark earning his helicopter pilot’s license and Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
“I recharge by doing activities that consume me,” says Clark. “Pushing so hard in business burned me out; but when you’re sitting in a giant metal bucket for 12 hours a day trying not to kill yourself, you can’t think about anything but flying. I felt a million times better when I came back.”
In the end, he says building a business is like martial arts or driving a race car — it’s all about remaining disciplined while taking calculated risks and leaning into the obstacles.
Connect with Matt Clark on his website and Instagram. Learn how to build an Amazon business at Amazing.com.
Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co
Delray Beach SEO
Via http://www.scpie.org/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares-how-to-build-your-own-ecommerce-company/
source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares-how-to-build-your-own-ecommerce-company
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Self-Made Millionaire Matt Clark Shares How to Build Your Own Ecommerce Company
Pay attention to expenses and double down on what works.
March 31, 2020 8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Growing up near Houston, Matt Clark didn’t seem destined to be an entrepreneur. He struggled after his parents divorced, comparing himself to kids with two-parent homes and seemingly happy lives. In high school, he hung out with kids going nowhere, doing drugs, and even selling drugs.
Fortunately, he never got into some of the same legal trouble as his friends. Still, Clark recognized his risky behavior threatened his hazy but ambitious dreams of one day running a business. He knew he needed change. Clark left Houston without telling any friends and spent the summer in Austin, Texas, to reset and distance himself from bad influences.
Clark’s aimlessness finally began to dissipate during his sophomore year of college, when he read The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield. “It was like the book was written for me,” he says, remembering how he tore through it within days. “It sparked my passion for entrepreneurship.”
That passion proved a powerful driver: He joined the college’s business-plan team as part of the undergraduate entrepreneurship program, and graduated near the top of his class with dual degrees.
But after graduating in 2008 amid the economic crash, Clark sought refuge in an investment banking job at Citigroup rather than pursue his then-hazy entrepreneurial dreams. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do at the time, and someone told me to work for a big corporation for three to five years and learn the ropes,” he recalls. But almost immediately, Clark realized that following standard advice would only get him mediocre returns. To build something huge — something bigger than he could even imagine — he had to follow his gut and fast.
Scratching the Entrepreneurial Itch
Clark skipped the hand-wringing and second-guessing to quit his banking gig just seven months into the job to launch a website selling health supplements. When he expanded to Amazon soon after, he watched in disbelief as his sales mushroomed, far eclipsing the site’s volume. Soon his business had surged from selling 10 to 11,000 products on Amazon.
To fuel that astronomical growth, Clark immersed himself in the then-fledgling community of ecommerce entrepreneurs. He attended seminars about Google advertising and read every sales and business book. “This helped me go from zero to $2 million in revenue, but I was scaling so fast that I wasn’t tracking anything,” says Clark, who was so focused on that top-line number he didn’t pay attention to things like hard-line expenses, labor and profit margins. If he had, he would have quickly seen that his booming business was operating in the red.
This unsustainable growth came to a head when he got a six-figure credit card bill and realized he didn’t have the cash flow to make the full repayment. “I’d been so focused on sales that I didn’t pay attention to my expenses,” says Clark. “I realized I had to learn to produce profits, not just sales.”
Facing such financial strain, some entrepreneurs might have tightened their belts. Clark made another bold move instead: scraping his bank account almost clean to spend $10,000 to attend one of renowned life coach Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery events — even though he was barely making ends meet. “I was desperate,” he recalls. “I needed to meet others as motivated as me and figured anyone willing to pay $10,000 must be pretty motivated.”
There he met someone who later introduced him to Jason Katzenback, a serial entrepreneur who was looking to dive into the next big idea. Together, they decided to help aspiring entrepreneurs build ecommerce companies while avoiding Clark’s mistakes. “I learned how to build a business in college and attended all these courses and events, but I encountered lots of challenges,” says Clark. “There was a better way to teach this stuff.”
Founding an Ecommerce School
With Clark’s supplement business now out of the picture, he was able to focus on building a new company with Katzenback: Amazing.com. One of their programs, Amazon Selling Machine, helps people create private-label businesses selling physical goods on the rapidly growing platform.
They guide students step by step, from choosing a product to sell and finding suppliers to marketing agency. The videos, community support and access to business tools usher newbies through the sometimes painful early stages. Customers can also leverage a mentor network to connect with someone who has successfully navigated similar challenges.
Jason Katzenback and Matt Clark hosting an Amazing Selling Machine tutorial.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
Amazing urges entrepreneurs to focus on high-quality products and take packaging seriously. “It sounds crazy to me now, but I didn’t do that with my supplement company,” admits Clark. “In my rush to get a business up and running, I sold the first thing I could get my hands on. Some of my early products had terrible packaging, while the ingredients were pretty much the same as everyone else’s.”
Clark counsels sellers to picture a real person — someone like their mother, brother or daughter — who will experience the product. “The better you can make that experience, the more likely your business will succeed long-term.”
Not Living Up to the Amazing Name
By 2015, Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their annual live event and had a team of around 50 working at its Austin headquarters — but the company was teetering on the edge of ruin. That year, Katzenback’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer, prompting him to quit the business temporarily to focus on family and leaving Clark to steer the ship solo.
Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their 2015 annual event but was on the brink of ruin.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
While Katzenback was away, Clark pivoted Amazon Selling Machine from a premium-priced, intensive course to a low-priced monthly membership, hoping to help even more people build businesses. “I tried to go wide to appeal to everyone instead of going deep into a niche,” he explains.
It didn’t work.
“I made several bad decisions fueled by blind optimism and ambition,” he shares candidly. “I thought, What got us here won’t get us where we want to go. So I completely threw away our main product.
“We were stuck with a massive operational load, including $40,000 monthly rent, and were burning through half a million dollars every month,” he continues. “I had to lay off half my team and came within a week of running out of cash.” Clark found the experience personally devastating — he couldn’t sleep, eat or bear to let his mind linger on the employees he’d lost.
But he also recognized that the Amazing.com live events were a bright spot. The company continued to host the live events, and the joy he saw on members’ faces was like a salve for his soul. “They kept telling me that our original program changed their lives,” says Clark. “I realized we just needed to do what worked.”
Humility, Discipline and the Right Kind of Growth
Clark refocused the business on the original, premium ecommerce training program. By slowly expanding from there, he is looking forward to sustained growth.
He shares that the struggles taught him humility and how to spot customers who are about to make similar mistakes with their businesses. Most importantly, it taught him to be careful about hiring because others’ lives are affected.
Clark also advises not to become too risk-averse. He counsels his customers to manage risk carefully so they can aggressively pursue their targets. “We could have discovered that the new product didn’t work by simply testing it before we threw away our flagship product,” he points out.
Now that Clark knows how to take smart risks in business, he also combines caution with adrenaline in his personal life. He practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu several times a week and has spent his off-time earning his helicopter pilot’s license in Hawaii and attending Porsche driving school.
Life outside business: Matt Clark earning his helicopter pilot’s license and Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
“I recharge by doing activities that consume me,” says Clark. “Pushing so hard in business burned me out; but when you’re sitting in a giant metal bucket for 12 hours a day trying not to kill yourself, you can’t think about anything but flying. I felt a million times better when I came back.”
In the end, he says building a business is like martial arts or driving a race car — it’s all about remaining disciplined while taking calculated risks and leaning into the obstacles.
Connect with Matt Clark on his website and Instagram. Learn how to build an Amazon business at Amazing.com.
Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co
Delray Beach SEO
source http://www.scpie.org/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares-how-to-build-your-own-ecommerce-company/
source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/03/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares.html
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Self-Made Millionaire Matt Clark Shares How to Build Your Own Ecommerce Company
Pay attention to expenses and double down on what works.
March 31, 2020 8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Growing up near Houston, Matt Clark didn’t seem destined to be an entrepreneur. He struggled after his parents divorced, comparing himself to kids with two-parent homes and seemingly happy lives. In high school, he hung out with kids going nowhere, doing drugs, and even selling drugs.
Fortunately, he never got into some of the same legal trouble as his friends. Still, Clark recognized his risky behavior threatened his hazy but ambitious dreams of one day running a business. He knew he needed change. Clark left Houston without telling any friends and spent the summer in Austin, Texas, to reset and distance himself from bad influences.
Clark’s aimlessness finally began to dissipate during his sophomore year of college, when he read The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield. “It was like the book was written for me,” he says, remembering how he tore through it within days. “It sparked my passion for entrepreneurship.”
That passion proved a powerful driver: He joined the college’s business-plan team as part of the undergraduate entrepreneurship program, and graduated near the top of his class with dual degrees.
But after graduating in 2008 amid the economic crash, Clark sought refuge in an investment banking job at Citigroup rather than pursue his then-hazy entrepreneurial dreams. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do at the time, and someone told me to work for a big corporation for three to five years and learn the ropes,” he recalls. But almost immediately, Clark realized that following standard advice would only get him mediocre returns. To build something huge — something bigger than he could even imagine — he had to follow his gut and fast.
Scratching the Entrepreneurial Itch
Clark skipped the hand-wringing and second-guessing to quit his banking gig just seven months into the job to launch a website selling health supplements. When he expanded to Amazon soon after, he watched in disbelief as his sales mushroomed, far eclipsing the site’s volume. Soon his business had surged from selling 10 to 11,000 products on Amazon.
To fuel that astronomical growth, Clark immersed himself in the then-fledgling community of ecommerce entrepreneurs. He attended seminars about Google advertising and read every sales and business book. “This helped me go from zero to $2 million in revenue, but I was scaling so fast that I wasn’t tracking anything,” says Clark, who was so focused on that top-line number he didn’t pay attention to things like hard-line expenses, labor and profit margins. If he had, he would have quickly seen that his booming business was operating in the red.
This unsustainable growth came to a head when he got a six-figure credit card bill and realized he didn’t have the cash flow to make the full repayment. “I’d been so focused on sales that I didn’t pay attention to my expenses,” says Clark. “I realized I had to learn to produce profits, not just sales.”
Facing such financial strain, some entrepreneurs might have tightened their belts. Clark made another bold move instead: scraping his bank account almost clean to spend $10,000 to attend one of renowned life coach Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery events — even though he was barely making ends meet. “I was desperate,” he recalls. “I needed to meet others as motivated as me and figured anyone willing to pay $10,000 must be pretty motivated.”
There he met someone who later introduced him to Jason Katzenback, a serial entrepreneur who was looking to dive into the next big idea. Together, they decided to help aspiring entrepreneurs build ecommerce companies while avoiding Clark’s mistakes. “I learned how to build a business in college and attended all these courses and events, but I encountered lots of challenges,” says Clark. “There was a better way to teach this stuff.”
Founding an Ecommerce School
With Clark’s supplement business now out of the picture, he was able to focus on building a new company with Katzenback: Amazing.com. One of their programs, Amazon Selling Machine, helps people create private-label businesses selling physical goods on the rapidly growing platform.
They guide students step by step, from choosing a product to sell and finding suppliers to marketing agency. The videos, community support and access to business tools usher newbies through the sometimes painful early stages. Customers can also leverage a mentor network to connect with someone who has successfully navigated similar challenges.
Jason Katzenback and Matt Clark hosting an Amazing Selling Machine tutorial.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
Amazing urges entrepreneurs to focus on high-quality products and take packaging seriously. “It sounds crazy to me now, but I didn’t do that with my supplement company,” admits Clark. “In my rush to get a business up and running, I sold the first thing I could get my hands on. Some of my early products had terrible packaging, while the ingredients were pretty much the same as everyone else’s.”
Clark counsels sellers to picture a real person — someone like their mother, brother or daughter — who will experience the product. “The better you can make that experience, the more likely your business will succeed long-term.”
Not Living Up to the Amazing Name
By 2015, Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their annual live event and had a team of around 50 working at its Austin headquarters — but the company was teetering on the edge of ruin. That year, Katzenback’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer, prompting him to quit the business temporarily to focus on family and leaving Clark to steer the ship solo.
Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their 2015 annual event but was on the brink of ruin.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
While Katzenback was away, Clark pivoted Amazon Selling Machine from a premium-priced, intensive course to a low-priced monthly membership, hoping to help even more people build businesses. “I tried to go wide to appeal to everyone instead of going deep into a niche,” he explains.
It didn’t work.
“I made several bad decisions fueled by blind optimism and ambition,” he shares candidly. “I thought, What got us here won’t get us where we want to go. So I completely threw away our main product.
“We were stuck with a massive operational load, including $40,000 monthly rent, and were burning through half a million dollars every month,” he continues. “I had to lay off half my team and came within a week of running out of cash.” Clark found the experience personally devastating — he couldn’t sleep, eat or bear to let his mind linger on the employees he’d lost.
But he also recognized that the Amazing.com live events were a bright spot. The company continued to host the live events, and the joy he saw on members’ faces was like a salve for his soul. “They kept telling me that our original program changed their lives,” says Clark. “I realized we just needed to do what worked.”
Humility, Discipline and the Right Kind of Growth
Clark refocused the business on the original, premium ecommerce training program. By slowly expanding from there, he is looking forward to sustained growth.
He shares that the struggles taught him humility and how to spot customers who are about to make similar mistakes with their businesses. Most importantly, it taught him to be careful about hiring because others’ lives are affected.
Clark also advises not to become too risk-averse. He counsels his customers to manage risk carefully so they can aggressively pursue their targets. “We could have discovered that the new product didn’t work by simply testing it before we threw away our flagship product,” he points out.
Now that Clark knows how to take smart risks in business, he also combines caution with adrenaline in his personal life. He practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu several times a week and has spent his off-time earning his helicopter pilot’s license in Hawaii and attending Porsche driving school.
Life outside business: Matt Clark earning his helicopter pilot’s license and Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
“I recharge by doing activities that consume me,” says Clark. “Pushing so hard in business burned me out; but when you’re sitting in a giant metal bucket for 12 hours a day trying not to kill yourself, you can’t think about anything but flying. I felt a million times better when I came back.”
In the end, he says building a business is like martial arts or driving a race car — it’s all about remaining disciplined while taking calculated risks and leaning into the obstacles.
Connect with Matt Clark on his website and Instagram. Learn how to build an Amazon business at Amazing.com.
Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co
Delray Beach SEO
source http://www.scpie.org/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares-how-to-build-your-own-ecommerce-company/
source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/614131472751804416
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Text
Self-Made Millionaire Matt Clark Shares How to Build Your Own Ecommerce Company
Pay attention to expenses and double down on what works.
March 31, 2020 8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Growing up near Houston, Matt Clark didn’t seem destined to be an entrepreneur. He struggled after his parents divorced, comparing himself to kids with two-parent homes and seemingly happy lives. In high school, he hung out with kids going nowhere, doing drugs, and even selling drugs.
Fortunately, he never got into some of the same legal trouble as his friends. Still, Clark recognized his risky behavior threatened his hazy but ambitious dreams of one day running a business. He knew he needed change. Clark left Houston without telling any friends and spent the summer in Austin, Texas, to reset and distance himself from bad influences.
Clark’s aimlessness finally began to dissipate during his sophomore year of college, when he read The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield. “It was like the book was written for me,” he says, remembering how he tore through it within days. “It sparked my passion for entrepreneurship.”
That passion proved a powerful driver: He joined the college’s business-plan team as part of the undergraduate entrepreneurship program, and graduated near the top of his class with dual degrees.
But after graduating in 2008 amid the economic crash, Clark sought refuge in an investment banking job at Citigroup rather than pursue his then-hazy entrepreneurial dreams. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do at the time, and someone told me to work for a big corporation for three to five years and learn the ropes,” he recalls. But almost immediately, Clark realized that following standard advice would only get him mediocre returns. To build something huge — something bigger than he could even imagine — he had to follow his gut and fast.
Scratching the Entrepreneurial Itch
Clark skipped the hand-wringing and second-guessing to quit his banking gig just seven months into the job to launch a website selling health supplements. When he expanded to Amazon soon after, he watched in disbelief as his sales mushroomed, far eclipsing the site’s volume. Soon his business had surged from selling 10 to 11,000 products on Amazon.
To fuel that astronomical growth, Clark immersed himself in the then-fledgling community of ecommerce entrepreneurs. He attended seminars about Google advertising and read every sales and business book. “This helped me go from zero to $2 million in revenue, but I was scaling so fast that I wasn’t tracking anything,” says Clark, who was so focused on that top-line number he didn’t pay attention to things like hard-line expenses, labor and profit margins. If he had, he would have quickly seen that his booming business was operating in the red.
This unsustainable growth came to a head when he got a six-figure credit card bill and realized he didn’t have the cash flow to make the full repayment. “I’d been so focused on sales that I didn’t pay attention to my expenses,” says Clark. “I realized I had to learn to produce profits, not just sales.”
Facing such financial strain, some entrepreneurs might have tightened their belts. Clark made another bold move instead: scraping his bank account almost clean to spend $10,000 to attend one of renowned life coach Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery events — even though he was barely making ends meet. “I was desperate,” he recalls. “I needed to meet others as motivated as me and figured anyone willing to pay $10,000 must be pretty motivated.”
There he met someone who later introduced him to Jason Katzenback, a serial entrepreneur who was looking to dive into the next big idea. Together, they decided to help aspiring entrepreneurs build ecommerce companies while avoiding Clark’s mistakes. “I learned how to build a business in college and attended all these courses and events, but I encountered lots of challenges,” says Clark. “There was a better way to teach this stuff.”
Founding an Ecommerce School
With Clark’s supplement business now out of the picture, he was able to focus on building a new company with Katzenback: Amazing.com. One of their programs, Amazon Selling Machine, helps people create private-label businesses selling physical goods on the rapidly growing platform.
They guide students step by step, from choosing a product to sell and finding suppliers to marketing agency. The videos, community support and access to business tools usher newbies through the sometimes painful early stages. Customers can also leverage a mentor network to connect with someone who has successfully navigated similar challenges.
Jason Katzenback and Matt Clark hosting an Amazing Selling Machine tutorial.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
Amazing urges entrepreneurs to focus on high-quality products and take packaging seriously. “It sounds crazy to me now, but I didn’t do that with my supplement company,” admits Clark. “In my rush to get a business up and running, I sold the first thing I could get my hands on. Some of my early products had terrible packaging, while the ingredients were pretty much the same as everyone else’s.”
Clark counsels sellers to picture a real person — someone like their mother, brother or daughter — who will experience the product. “The better you can make that experience, the more likely your business will succeed long-term.”
Not Living Up to the Amazing Name
By 2015, Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their annual live event and had a team of around 50 working at its Austin headquarters — but the company was teetering on the edge of ruin. That year, Katzenback’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer, prompting him to quit the business temporarily to focus on family and leaving Clark to steer the ship solo.
Amazing.com hosted Richard Branson at their 2015 annual event but was on the brink of ruin.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
While Katzenback was away, Clark pivoted Amazon Selling Machine from a premium-priced, intensive course to a low-priced monthly membership, hoping to help even more people build businesses. “I tried to go wide to appeal to everyone instead of going deep into a niche,” he explains.
It didn’t work.
“I made several bad decisions fueled by blind optimism and ambition,” he shares candidly. “I thought, What got us here won’t get us where we want to go. So I completely threw away our main product.
“We were stuck with a massive operational load, including $40,000 monthly rent, and were burning through half a million dollars every month,” he continues. “I had to lay off half my team and came within a week of running out of cash.” Clark found the experience personally devastating — he couldn’t sleep, eat or bear to let his mind linger on the employees he’d lost.
But he also recognized that the Amazing.com live events were a bright spot. The company continued to host the live events, and the joy he saw on members’ faces was like a salve for his soul. “They kept telling me that our original program changed their lives,” says Clark. “I realized we just needed to do what worked.”
Humility, Discipline and the Right Kind of Growth
Clark refocused the business on the original, premium ecommerce training program. By slowly expanding from there, he is looking forward to sustained growth.
He shares that the struggles taught him humility and how to spot customers who are about to make similar mistakes with their businesses. Most importantly, it taught him to be careful about hiring because others’ lives are affected.
Clark also advises not to become too risk-averse. He counsels his customers to manage risk carefully so they can aggressively pursue their targets. “We could have discovered that the new product didn’t work by simply testing it before we threw away our flagship product,” he points out.
Now that Clark knows how to take smart risks in business, he also combines caution with adrenaline in his personal life. He practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu several times a week and has spent his off-time earning his helicopter pilot’s license in Hawaii and attending Porsche driving school.
Life outside business: Matt Clark earning his helicopter pilot’s license and Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt.
Image Credit: Matt Clark
“I recharge by doing activities that consume me,” says Clark. “Pushing so hard in business burned me out; but when you’re sitting in a giant metal bucket for 12 hours a day trying not to kill yourself, you can’t think about anything but flying. I felt a million times better when I came back.”
In the end, he says building a business is like martial arts or driving a race car — it’s all about remaining disciplined while taking calculated risks and leaning into the obstacles.
Connect with Matt Clark on his website and Instagram. Learn how to build an Amazon business at Amazing.com.
Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co
Delray Beach SEO
source http://www.scpie.org/self-made-millionaire-matt-clark-shares-how-to-build-your-own-ecommerce-company/
0 notes
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CASEY WILLIAMS is TWENTY-EIGHT and is a LAWYER at RICHARDSON & OSWALD. He looks just like IAIN DE CAESTECKER and is TAKEN.
♫ In My Arms - Plumb ♫
KNOWING CLOUDS WILL RAGE IN, STORMS WILL RACE IN
[TW: Neglect, and death]
Casey had it rough for the first few years of life, but after his adoption he was pretty sure he was the luckiest kid in the world. His family has been his rock through everything life has thrown at him, from recovering from his early years, to his marriage, the birth of his daughter, and the death of his wife. He wants to be the kind of parent to Abigail that his parents were to him.
BUT YOU WILL BE SAFE IN MY ARMS
Casey Williams, born Casey Roberts, had far from a normal childhood. Most of his memories before the age of eight are far from pleasant, as he grew up with drug addicted parents in a haze of extreme neglect. When his parents were arrested, he found himself placed in foster care where he spent years bouncing from home to home. Casey’s preteen years were difficult as he struggled to deal with the aftermath of his neglect, and years were spent in therapy. When he was finally placed with the family that adopted him, Casey was thirteen and though part of him was thrilled, another part was terrified that it would all fall apart. Jeremy, his new adoptive father was a doctor, tragically widowed years before when his first wife had died of cancer, and his two teenage daughters were very close in age to Casey. His wife, Carrie, had divorced several years back and had a younger son and daughter herself. Adopting Casey was their way of adding to their family, as well as helping out a child in need.
It took most of the first six months for Casey to realize that he would truly be safe and loved with his new family, and he had broken down crying in his room when he did. As he allowed himself to trust his new parents and siblings, he found himself gaining a real family for the first time in his life. For the next several years, things went so well that Casey could barely believe it. With a stable and safe home life, his grades were some of the best in the school and the girlfriend he met in Junior year was the most amazing girl he had ever seen. Head over heels in love, Casey proposed to Isabelle on Valentine’s Day of their senior year and the two were married that Summer, wanting to start college as man and wife. Though their families had questioned their early marriage, in the end they had decided to support the couple. After the two headed off to Berkley where Casey began to study law as Isabelle studied architecture, it was hard to deny that everything seemed picture perfect.
Isabelle’s pregnancy had come as a shock, the young couple had only just started their Sophomore year, but after the initial panic died down, their families had stepped up to try to help them with the baby, and as details began to work themselves out, everyone looked forward to meeting their child. Casey, however, was terrified of being a father. He had heard so many stories about people becoming like their parents, and the last thing he wanted was to treat his child the way he had been treated by his biological parents, never being loved or cared for. However, the moment that Abigail was placed in his arms he knew that he would never be capable of hurting her in any way. In an instant, his world had shifted and the baby girl he held was now the center of it. His new goal in life was simply to keep her safe, healthy, and happy.
Though it wasn’t easy, Isabelle and Casey settled into their new family life. With willing baby-sitters on both sides, they learned to balance raising a family with their classes and jobs, and Casey knew that he wouldn’t have changed anything. Isabelle graduated, and Casey moved on to grad school and life began to stabilize for the two of them as they settled into a new routine. However, his world came crashing down around him four months later. After visiting with Isabelle’s family before heading back to their apartment to put the kids to bed they were only ten minutes from home when a drunk driver slammed into the passenger’s side of the car and the next thing that Casey knew, he was waking up in the hospital screaming for his wife and daughter. He was quickly told that Abby were injured, but would ultimately be fine, as her car seat had protected her from any serious injuries. However, the next words out of his doctor’s mouth changed everything; Isabelle was dead.
For the next few months, Casey felt like he was on autopilot. He had taken rest of the semester off, unable to face school in his grief. Isabelle’s family blamed him for the accident, convinced that without Casey in her life, they never would have lost their daughter. He shut himself off from most of the world, focusing only on taking care of his daughter. It was his adoptive father who was finally able to get through to him, reminding Casey that he had been through the same thing. As Jeremy helped Casey begin to move past his grief, the father and son became closer than they had ever been before.
Despite what he knew his family had feared, Casey was able to pick himself back up. He returned to school and his family watched Abby when he had classes while she wasn’t in preschool and slowly but surely, they pieced their lived back together. With his family at his side, he saw Abby entering kindergarten as he graduated law school and passed the bar exam. The party his family through that night was bittersweet. It was everything he had worked for for years, but the absence of Isabelle still stung. It didn’t take nearly as long as he had expected to get a job with a law firm, and though it wasn’t the town he grew up in, it was still in California, and he and Abby made the move to Hermosa Beach.
Life in LA was good for them both. They were still close enough to visit family, but Casey felt like he was finally finding his footing as a single father. He had a few friends, and had made attempts at dating, but finding someone that he clicked with and that understood that Abby was always going to be the center of his world wasn’t exactly easy. His social life was pretty non-existent, but he didn’t really care. He had Disney movie marathons, dance recitals, piano practices, and art projects to keep him busy. Honestly, there wasn’t time for much else, and he would rather give what time he had to Abby. As long as he had his daughter, he was happy.
PERSONALITY
✔ Responsible, Intelligent, Caring
✘ Awkward, Stubburn, Disorganized
PUZZLE PIECE
➳ Hermosa Beach isn’t exactly a big town, and so even though they didn’t run in the same circles at all, he had seen Robin around several times. Just before her kidnapping, Casey overheard an upset Robin having an argument with someone over the phone.
CONNECTIONS
❤ Adam Tanner: Adam has become something of mentor to Casey. With his own father several towns away, it helps to have another single father to turn to when Casey isn’t sure what to do.
❤ Emmett Cabello: Emmett seems to be the most recent member to the single father’s club Casey accidentally started somewhere along the way, even if it’s mostly because Abby has a crush on Emmett’s son.
❤ Victoria Martinez: Victoria was one of the first friends Casey made in Hermosa Beach, as he doesn’t even know how to tell her how grateful he is for that. Especially when she frequently offers her services as emergency baby-sitter.
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It’s time for me to get something off my chest...
I am a kid of cancer. I haven’t been able to accept this for the last four years but it’s time I finally do. My dad was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer (really bad news) in the winter of 2013, when I was a fresh faced, chubby, twelve year old. Of course it was obvious at first that he was sick. He lost a dramatic amount of weight, went through many intense surgeries, and was in and out of the hospital frequently. This went on for months and, as I assume many kids in the same situation do, I adapted. In fact, the diagnosis was a blessing after a while. That first summer he was sick was one of the best summers of my young life. My dad had just undergone more surgeries and was on bed (reclining chair) rest for either weeks or months (I didn’t pay much attention to the medical situation then and I don’t want to bother my mom for information right now) but the amount of time didn’t matter. I’ll be the first to admit I was a tough twelve year old to love and I had been going through my “I’m to big to be daddy’s little princess” phase for far too long but luckily that summer was also during my tween girl drama phase leaving me stranded at home all summer. Dad and I watched the entirety of West Wing and became the ultimate partners in crime. After that summer, I truly began to deny and ignore my dad’s diagnosis. I was too busy hating school, hating my friends, and of course hating myself. Middle school is hell and having a sick parent is worse. It was easier to pretend that scheduling around chemo and doctor appointments was just a normal thing to do. And believing it was easier actually made it easier cause guess what! No one cares that your parent is sick. “Everyone has problems.” No one knows about how your dad was too tired to take you too the movies like he promised or how he cries more now during dumb TV shows or how there is suddenly two medicine cabinets in the bathroom. So middle school, while influenced by cancer, was mostly spent ignoring it. I thought maybe I was lucky and I could even continue to ignore it through high school! But when have I ever been lucky? So high school is always busy and bustling especially when you make your first real friends, have a minor role in the school musical, basically run your grade’s student council, and of course have to be on honor roll to make dad proud. Yeah, I should probably mention how my anxiety kept getting worse through this whole time and slowly became focused on doing anything to make my dad happy, even though he was proud of me no matter what.
Well, I actually made it through the beginning of freshman year pretty smoothly, but then my dad started either a new chemo or radiation. Its blurry but the defining characteristic of this treatment was the hair loss. See my dad hadn’t lost any of his hair during any of his previous treatments (the most noticeable symptoms thus far had been weight fluctuations and fatigue) and my dad has a signature beard that was the first to go. My mom kept joking about how she married him with a beard and never saw him without one– that if he was ugly without a beard it would be grounds for divorce! And we all laughed but then he shaved his, then patchy, beard and he didn’t look ugly, he looked ten years older. His hair went one night in a restaurant, literally! It just started coming out in clumps and my mom went home and took out a razor and buzzed the rest off. He looked so sick then and it was so very painful to see. There is a picture of the two of us standing in front of my science fair project that year and whenever I stumble across it in my camera roll it takes every once of strength I have not to burst in to uncontrollable sobs. Not just because he look so different and sick but because I remember one night me and my mother crying and cursing the universe together in the car. She grabbed my hand and told me that we wouldn’t remember my dad that way, we’d remember the fat Irish guy with a beard (that probably had crumbs in it) and a magic trick in his pocket. The man ready to help with my math homework right when he came in the door. The man who could pick me up and carry me up the stairs and cuddle all night. The man who sings every song he knows loudly and off key and often. And I remember thinking “but this is the guy I’m gonna remember.” I hadn’t expected my dad’s hair loss to hurt me so much because he always had short hair but in reality it was just throwing the painful situation in my face. The rest of the year was difficult to say the least.
That summer, the summer before my sophomore year must have been the calm before the storm and in a sense I think we all knew that. We knew that stage four colon cancer wouldn’t go into remission and it wouldn’t respond to treatment much longer. But my parents, my idiotic 20 year old brother, and I remained as blissfully ignorant as possible. My dad and I played cribbage together and talked and made fun of my mom and dear god it was beautiful. I remember one amazing day where my dad and I were listening to music out in this lovely little tent we put up, to prevent his chemical filled skin and my pasty skin from getting burned, and my mom and brother came out and my dog ran around. It was beautiful. My parents played cards and I talked about which college I wanted to attend at that moment.
College. That was another hard pill to swallow. My brother had already gotten the whole parents take you to visit colleges and then you bond and pick one and plan a future. I desperately wanted to ensure that so the summer before sophomore year was full of college trips and visits and planning. It felt rushed and not enough but then the school year started and I was drowned in AP work and honors classes.
I am currently in my sophomore year and here is the reason I am writing this. Just recently my dad had a doctor’s appointment where they said it was the end of the line. That he fought the good fight but there is nothing left to be done. That had been the day that I had a big fight with mom and a really cool school field trip. My friend drove me home cause my parents were caught in traffic. I painted my nails and did my homework. My mom texted me to come downstairs and I prepared myself for an apology or an angry yell. Instead my mom said that they were down with treatment and then started saying things like “keep dad comfortable” and “hospice.” I went into shock and burst into tears. I immediately hugged my dad. For the first time in years I curled up in my dad’s lap but reality came crashing in so quickly because I was too big and it was too awkward to position. All that time wasted as a child playing with dolls or hiding when I could have been sitting on my daddy’s lap memorizing his scent, his hands, his arms, and not wasting a moment that I had with him. Since finding this out a month ago, my dad has been so very tired. We no longer go out to dinner or gallivant on weekends. We sit and watch TV. He seems to only eat grilled cheeses. Its surprisingly hard to coupe with the impending demise of someone who has had a terminal illness for four years. ¼ of my life. My teachers treated me like a broken egg for a week and promptly forgot. My peers are blissfully ignorant of my ungodly grief and have behaved in such a way. One of my fellow students even said “Oh wow, well I guess its good I met him when I ran into you that one time.” Haha God that is terrible (especially since my dad had met most of my peers through volunteer work for the school through my years in elementary school), but these kids don’t know. A sixteen year old shouldn’t understand what it’s like to have a parent slowly wither away in front of you. They should be able to be mad at their parents and sleep the night. They should be able to go out and have fun with their friends. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about the mental health of their other parent. Or finances. Or the possibility of carrying the gene for that type of cancer. I shouldn’t go to my room each night feeling guilty that I can’t sit with my dad watching TV for a few hours longer because I need to do my homework. I should be excited about school dances and potential significant others and new movies, but instead I’m scared shitless for what is ahead of me. I want to see New York, Broadway, with my daddy. I want my daddy to be at my high school graduation. I want him to see me off to college. See me graduate and get my first job. I want my future s/o to have to go to him and ask for permission to marry me. Dear God do I want my daddy to walk me down the isle. I want him to meet his grandkids cause my dad would be the best grandfather in all of history. I want my dad there for all the things he should be there for, I want him to take care of me forever.
But I’m a kid of a very strong cancer patient and I’m gonna survive this for him.
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